Miscellany: 3/31/12

Quote of the Day 

All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
Albert Einstein

Monthly Blog Update

Despite a month with a record number of posts, the blog experienced its first monthly drop in readership since last August and a three-month low. For some odd reason, readership appeared to sharply drop off around mid-month, although last month had a post (my Valentine's Day post) which attracted an unusually high number of pageviews, more than doubling my previous all-time post pageview high.

I have read a number of blogs on the web, and I can honestly say I haven't seen anything like this on the web. I can remember on rare occasions as a young kid being dropped off at day care. What impressed me, even then, wasn't toys or games: it was a single sheet of  copy paper. The things you could do with a blank sheet of paper: you could create something from nothing... So years later, when John-Boy Walton, an aspiring writer, got a set of writing tablets for Christmas by a Dad whom didn't understand but supported his ambition, I got how touched John-Boy was by the gift.

I used to wonder, when I started posting daily, whether I could fill the space. In fact, I seem to recall around the time of Obama's inauguration thinking perhaps there would be little to write about and certainly thought, if I didn't write it, that I would write an occasional post like for my other two blogs. But the fact is, except for maybe one or 2 days over the past two years, I've found myself limiting the topics I wanted to write about. It's a privilege and fun; I think I pick interesting topics, I'm probably the most readable political columnist out there (given the nature of the material), and I have a distinctive sense of humor (I think better than most professional comedians, at least when it comes to political topics). I think this bog makes for an interesting read even if you don't agree with my politics.

Reflections on Adam Smith (courtesy of Cafe Hayek)

• Dan Klein: "Maybe, as Alfred Marshall suspected, what is most important in economic wisdom are discursive verities about how things work by and large, not axiomatically or categorically, and the awareness that we generally cannot know the economic system well enough to intervene into it beneficially.  That was Adam Smith‘s central message for public policy, and it authorized a presumption of liberty."
• Russ Roberts: "DeLong then quotes Adam Smith. Smith understood that we admire wealth and fame. DeLong argues that this is why we don’t support high tax rates. I don’t think that’s the reason–it’s not sympathy with the rich. It’s a lack of sympathy for those who claim to know what is best for others and who claim to be able to spend other people’s money more wisely than they can."

$4.9B Government-Guaranteed Loan 
For the "Train From Nowhere"?
Obama's Idea of "Park & Ride": 
100 Miles to Parking Lot

Why Should American Taxpayers Have to Pay
For Obama's Grown-Up Lionel Train Set?

I haven't read Obama's autobiographies, but I strongly suspect that he didn't get his own train set as a little boy and he's been trying to make up for it ever since.

We know that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid LOVES the gambling industry in his home state of Nevada--so much that he has brought betting to the US Congress. No, not the Mega Millions: the Mega Billions (and Trillions).

Yes, from the very same administration that brought you Solyndra loan guarantees on the backs of the American taxpayers, the same one which keeps getting thwarted by fiscally responsible GOP governors in Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio and New Jersey against pushing-on-a-string, big-ticket infrastructure boondoggles, but undaunted in its attempts to back even the most lame-brained ideas, we have the latest attempts by a desperate Barack ("I Heart Crony Capitalism") Obama to buy off swing state Nevada in this fall's election.

Keep in mind that Las Vegas is an estimated 265 miles from Los Angeles. We have a private company that honestly believes it can lure drivers to drop off their cars roughly 38% of the way to Las Vegas and take a supertrain the rest of the way. Let me edit relevant discussion from USA Today:

Privately held DesertXpress is on the verge of landing a $4.9 billion loan from the Obama administration to build the 150 mph train. DesertXpress officials once boasted they would build the line with private dollars, but they now plan to rely on Federal Railroad Administration (FRA)  financing to cover the bulk of the cost. Construction cost projections have soared to as much as $6.5 billion, not including interest on the loan. 

FRA's own research warns it's difficult to predict how many people will ride the train.  Documents estimate an average round-trip fare of $100. Some fear taxpayer subsidies are inevitable. Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Association of Governments, which questioned ridership potential in a report last year. "There is no high-speed rail system in the world that operates without subsidies."

[The project assumes] car-loving Californians will drive about 100 miles from the Los Angeles area, pull off busy Interstate 15 and board a train for the final leg to the famous Strip. "It's insanity," says Thomas Finkbiner of the Intermodal Transportation Institute at the University of Denver. "People won't drive to a train to go someplace. If you are going to drive, why not drive all the way and leave when you want?"  FRA documents show virtually all [purported jobs created by the project] would be temporary.

I can just hear it now:  "Mom, are we home yet?" "No, dear. We have to get our bags (if they made it), make it to the car, but then we should be able to drive home in two hours, if the traffic isn't too bad." You have to wait up to 20 minutes (assuming no mechanical or scheduling problems) in either direction (which offsets the train commute time savings), your baggage handling goes through a third party, you have to rely on other transportation (versus your own vehicle) to get around in  Las Vegas, and you really don't save that much from driving costs (especially if you have multiple passengers).

My response: this is like an updated version of the Bridge to Nowhere (except that would have cost a fraction of this and not require the predictable subsidies ("too-big-to-fail rail"), like the federal government enabling a drug addiction, the moral hazard of progressives as usual malinvesting other people's money: who saves us from Bernie Madoff when the government is Bernie Madoff?). Why is the federal government involved? Because the government is underestimating and underpricing the riskiness of the project, and Obama is knowingly transferring risk from the private sector to the public sector. What, if anything, did this guy learn from the economic tsunami?

Now as for Transportation Secretary Ray "Republican-in-Name-Only" LaHood pushing Obamanomics (aka Voodoo Economics v. 44)...



What's Your Ticket to the Millionaire Lifestyle?
Marry a Doctor, a Lawyer, or a Business Owner?
How About a Public School Teacher?

Progressives, who try to rationalize statist interference in the hiring process by among other things demanding a minimum wage, never mind, for instance, that the majority of people earning minimum wage aren't even heads of household ("Studies find that only 20 percent of all minimum wage earners are single earners who are heads of households"), also like to portray public school teachers as underpaid spinsters paying for necessary school supplies out of their meager salaries.

But it turns out if you look at millionaire (net of home ownership) household occupations (including dual-income households), the top two occupations are: managers (17%) and teachers (12%). Other occupations (corporate executive, doctor, lawyer, dentist, salesman, etc.) occur at half the percentage or less as teachers. Why? Among other things, the households of these other professionals tend to be single-income.



Entertainment Potpourri

I've made occasional references about my general enjoyment of professional wresting entertainment. And, before I go any further, pro wrestling is "fake". (In fact, while we're at it, Mickey Mouse can't really talk, and the Easter Bunny can't lay eggs: what's the point?) The majority of us fans like the storylines, the exhibitions of athleticism and skill, and the rituals.

There is a vocabulary known to wrestling fan: babyfaces (good guys), heels (bad guys), cheap pops (cheers) or heat (booing), shoot interview vs. kayfabe (out-of-character, "real" interview vs. in-character mode), and a wrestler's distinctive finishing move(s) to end a match or characteristic gimmicks (persona) and catchphrases. There are also different types of wrestling styles (hardcore, lucha libre, etc.) and gimmick matches (e.g., steel cage, ironman, 2-out-of-3 falls, no DQ, falls count anywhere, etc.)

What are my preferences? Just like in my diet, I prefer variety, in particular a lot of skilled wrestling moves and counters, realism (staggering when no contact is made is not good), good storylines and swerves (e.g., where faces become heels). I don't prefer to see stereotypical, jingoistic characters, suicidal moves, blading (to ensure bleeding), or using weapons.

We are on the eve of Wrestlemania, WWE's trademark pay-per-view annual wrestling extravaganza. Vince McMahon, a second-generation wrestling executive, has created an unparalleled sports entertainment dynasty. His wife Linda, the former CEO, was the 2010 GOP candidate for US Senate from Connecticut and is running for retiring Joe Lieberman's open seat. (I supported Ms. McMahon against Richard "Vietnam War Hero" Blumenthal. Unfortunately, I've decided to support centrist former GOP Congressman Chris Shays as the more viable general election candidate. Shays would, for once, represent a fiscally responsible voice from Connecticut.)

There is little doubt about McMahon's business and marketing genius; he has two of the highest cable programs, Monday's flagship RAW on USA and Friday's Smackdown on SyFy  (with talent roughly subdivided between the shows). Nevertheless, he has had competition; Ted Turner briefly eclipsed WWE in the late 1990's with his competitive WCW promotion, luring away key former WWE champions or talent Hulk Hogan, Bret Hart, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall along with returning predecessor promotion NWA talent like Ric Flair, Sting, and Lex Luger. WCW promoted some very compelling factions (nWo, primarily of ex-WWE outsiders invading WCW; nWo would later splinter into Hollywood (Hogan) and Wolfpac factions)). WCW ran into various issues by 2001 (including network management no longer interested in carrying wrestling), eventually being acquired by WWE. Currently WWE's top alternative competition is TNA, with a flagship Impact telecast on Spike Thursday nights.

As a fan and as a writer, I suspect I will have already alienated Vince McMahon by declining to support his wife's campaign for the GOP nomination this year; I'm sure he'll think I know even less about the wrestling business than the little I know of politics. Let me start with tomorrow's PPV.

There are two major matches: the promotion's chief babyface over the past few years, John Cena, is facing the Rock or Dwayne Johnson (a former WWE champion turned major film star after a breakout role in one of the popular Mummy movies) in "The Match of the Ages" or "Once in a Lifetime". Meanwhile, HHH (McMahon's son-in-law Paul Levesque, the heir apparent and semi-retired wrestler) takes on, for the third time, the Undertaker's unbeaten Wrestlemania winning streak in "The End of an Era" match.

Some basic comments here on these matches: first, I hardly consider Rock vs. Cena the most highly anticipated matchup of all time. They are both brilliant at the microphone in a business where the ability to sell yourself is key to championships and big paydays. You can be the most gifted wrestler in the world, but management is not going to put a belt on you if you can't draw paying fans.

Better matchups: Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant; Hulk Hogan vs. the Ultimate Warrior. In the first case, you had two major babyfaces, including an undefeated giant (in WWE). But two babyfaces? Who do the fans cheer for? As I recall, McMahon played an angle which played on Andre's ego: Hulk Hogan got a huge trophy and Andre got a smaller award. Andre noted that he's undefeated and deserves a trophy at least as big as Hulk's. But Hulk's the champ and you're not: he deserves the bigger trophy--and even when Andre is awarded the trophy, Hulk is there to talk up--well, not Andre, but himself, of course. Andre hired heel manager Bobby Heenan. In the second case, there was the rising dominant babyface Intercontinental Champion Warrior whom challenged the babyface Champion Hogan. (Hogan jobbed (lost) to the Ultimate Warrior.)

The Rock and Cena are both former champions (multiple occasions and/or belts). The plot line is fairly weak: Cena thinks that Rock isn't a true wrestler having forgotten all about his fans in achieving fame and fortune in Hollywood. It's not clear why Rock is motivated to come back--probably to prove to the fans he's still got it, and Hollywood hasn't changed him.

I've already been puzzled by how WWE handled the angle: they booked adversaries Rock and Cena as partners in a PPV tag match months before Wrestlemania. If I was trying to build interest into a once-in-a-lifetime match, I wouldn't have booked the two together in an interim PPV (or other appearance)--which seems to take away from the anticipation of their rare meeting, except for having something like a pro boxing weigh-in where the two fighters start talking trash at each other, and they go after each other in shoot fashion. I also think that if you're trying to push the two as adversaries in a future match, booking them together as a tag team is sending mixed messages. If I was going to book Rock into an angle in the interim PPV, I would have had Rock interfere in a championship match, costing Cena the belt (say, by attacking Cena's opponent), giving Cena more of a motive to go after Rock. (And/or McMahon could have freshened up the Hogan/Andre the Giant trophy storyline, say, by presenting Rock with an honorary "People's Champ" championship belt that Rock could use to taunt Cena.)

I'm mostly intrigued how WWE is going to book the match. It's difficult to book Rock into a win without making Cena, a key draw, look weak; Rock is still young enough to wrestle on an occasional basis, but given his heavy acting schedule, you can't book him into a title (Cena at present doesn't hold a belt). On the other hand, I don't see the logic of bringing Rock back just to have him job to Cena: Cena doesn't need the push, it weakens the Rock character, and Rock could always shrug off the loss by claiming ring rust or it wasn't a title match. I think they want to book Rock in such a way as to set up a future match (say, against current champs Daniel Bryan or CM Punk) at a future Wrestlemania. (For instance, they could run an angle of CM Punk turning heel by interfering in the match's outcome, tarnishing the winner's victory; Punk then could taunt the Rock with his "best wrestler in the world" gimmick, pointing out that taking on Cena didn't prove anything, that Rock was washed up as a wrestler, etc. It might also provide a motive for Cena's pursuit of Punk's championship, which is currently hard to book since they are both babyfaces.)

Cena is an unusual babyface in the sense that nearly half the fans boo him (including myself). I think the WWE has painted themselves into a corner. A heel turn for Cena has been overdue for a long time. Every once in a while WWE will tease a heel turn, e.g., when babyface wrestler Zack Ryder was betrayed by friend Cena kissing Eve, Zack's dream girl. Cena sells so much merchandise as a babyface--and is one of the most requested Make a Wish Foundation personalities--it's difficult to see if or when they can turn Cena. But I think they've run the course with Cena as a babyface.

As for HHH vs. Undertaker: the Undertaker over the last 4 Wrestlemania's has faced HHE DX teammate now retired Shawn Michaels and now HHH. To me, as a fan, Undertaker/HHH #3 at Wrestlemania is just not compelling: been there, done that. I'm bored; changing the match gimmick isn't enough.

WWE doesn't want to book Undertaker into a loss, but having an up-and-coming star job to the Undertaker would be a step back. So you probably want to book someone currently not with WWE with established credibility (prior world champions)--say, TNA's Sting or Kurt Angle, David Batista, Brock Lesnar, or Bill Goldberg. Maybe a revamped Great Khali character, like Mark Henry's (but the Great Khali's ring skills aren't that great, and I'm not sure even the Undertaker could carry him in an entertaining match.)

It's hard to believe that they will book Undertaker to lose his first Wrestlemania bout. They've been teasing an ego conflict between Michaels and HHH: will Michaels really validate HHH beating the Undertaker, something he himself couldn't do in his last two Wrestlemania's? This has all the earmarks of Michaels coming out of retirement to settle issues with HHH. Actually, Michaels and HHH did feud in the past, and I always thought it was unusual that when Michaels first left the WWE for an extended period, HHH as the new leader of DX cut an obnoxious promo mocking Michaels' leaving, but WWE never did anything with that, even when they feuded years later. (But there were other storylines left dangling: for example, TNA owner/wrestler Jeff Jarrett clocked Hogan in 2003; there must have been some contractual issues, but when Hogan eventually did join TNA, the promotion never did run a revenge angle on Jarrett.)

Some general comments/criticisms:

• I never liked the way WWE handled the WCW acquisition. I think it's was petty and bad business: McMahon generally booked WCW wrestlers into squash matches (losses). I would have probably continued to hold the established brand, retooled Nitro in place of the current Smackdown and retained some of the key PPV concepts, like Halloween Havoc and Starrcade. I would have probably run an inverted outsider-like Wolfpac, not unlike how the upstart rookie group Nexus was initially booked. I thought that the way McMahon booked post-merger WCW devalued the promotion. Similarly, the ECW acquisition was mishandled.
• I never liked the McMahon family storylines, particularly as wrestlers and some of the degrading gimmicks (like the "kiss my ass" line). I thought there were better ways to handle the family ownership angle, e.g., a Godfather-like McMahon hiring a team of heel wrestling goons to enforce his wishes, offering babyfaces bribes or guaranteeing belts if they would just turn heel, etc.
• I thought the CM Punk "leave WWE" shoot interview angle was one of the freshest ideas in years. But I think they completely botched Punk's return. I would have probably dragged it out, showing "independent" defenses of the WWE title with a new WWE champion named--with a title reunification angle down the line. I do think Wrestlemania's bout is inspired, with Jericho and Punk two of the best technical wrestlers around--and egos to match. But CM Punk's championship reign and mike work have been uninspired to date.
• I wasn't sure at first about babyface Daniel Bryan's hypocritical, exploitative use of his title shot via Money in the Bank, but his transition as a heel has been brilliantly conceived and executed. It has grown on me to the point I think it's the best angle right now in WWE and I look forward to his goofy self-congratulatory entrances. It would be a mistake to take the belt off him tomorrow. That being said, the self-superior vegan diet angle is more annoying than anything else. I would probably run an angle where he claims to be better than his adversaries or the fans. I don't know--claim, for instance, that he scored perfect college board scores, he's beaten better competitors or run clips from opponents' common foes with the foes mentioning Bryan as the better wrestler.
• WWE's competition TNA heel champion Bobby Roode, originally half of the babyface Beer Money, arguably the best pro tag team in years, is an inspired character, even showing open disrespect for the TNA owner Dixie Carter. He's very believable as a heel, right down to his facial expressions, along with Bryan, among the best distinctive heel characters in years.
• Former Olympics strongman Mark Henry has finally been booked into an all but unbeatable heel. I've always wondered why the WWE never booked a battle royal of big men like Henry, Khali, Big Show, and Kane and/or created a super-heavyweight belt.

I probably won't cover wrestling news as a regular feature in this blog. But there is a bit of nostalgia there. I remember watching it with my grandfather on a Christmas visit during college. He was amazed by Andre the Giant. Then there was my grand-aunt Ida, Grandfather's sister, whom would marvel at Lex Luger's "torture rack". My favorite tag team in the mid-80's, while I was finishing up my dissertation was the heel Jake "the Snake" Roberts and the Barbarian (John Nord) duo going after heel Ted Dibiase and the late Dr. Death Steve Williams' tag team titles. I like the little stories of  good vs. evil, David vs. Goliath, etc. It's not so much who wins or loses, but the storyline. The fact that Ultimate Warrior (or simply 'Warrior') happens to be an outspoken conservative is just icing on the cake.

Of course, probably 90-95% of WWE fans and most of the wrestling radio shows will probably tell you that I don't know anything about pro wrestling. Fair enough.

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups

Doobie Brothers, "Listen to the Music"

Miscellany: 3/30/12

Quote of the Day  

You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who can do nothing for them or to them.
Malcolm Forbes

I Got Polled Today (Re: Next Tuesday's Primary)

I'm a pretty great uncle--in fact "the best uncle in the whole world", according to my then grade-school niece, my middle brother's oldest, whom solemnly attested to what she wrote by printing out her full name (with middle initial, no less, just in case I had her confused with another female Guillemette with the same given name, ranking #3050 in popularity according to a contemporary census).

And then some magic happened: she was now a young woman with a mind of her own, an Obama-Maniac whom had discovered that her once beloved uncle was supporting John McCain and started flaming me via email. Hmmm. Maybe I'm not "the best uncle in the whole world"?

I have had a good role model, my mother's older sibling, a retired priest; I wrote a tribute post about him in late April 2009. In many ways, we're very much alike: we're both very conservative and articulate, natural leaders and administrators. (For instance, he would come into a rundown parish and, without complaint or finger-pointing, systematically turn things around, repairing the infrastructure, expanding facilities (parking), etc. No doubt he learned a lot from my grandfather, whom owned and operated a mom-and-pop grocery; in fact, my uncle in his teens drove the store's truck, making deliveries to customers. He had no political ambitions to advance in the Church's hierarchy; he simply wanted the Church's bureaucrats to leave him alone and let him serve his local parish as pastor, his dream job.) He and I have different personalities: I'm more direct and willing to take up the give and take of the free market of ideas; he's more politically savvy and measured, doesn't like to repeat himself, and is satisfied to make his point, whether or not others agree.

My uncle has a first-rate mind and earned his (post-baccalaureate) licentiate in theology; I believe that he mentioned that lectures and exams were delivered or written in Latin.  But for some reason, my uncle has been disinterested in applied mathematics, in particular, statistics. He has always been dismissive of polls, noting that he himself had never been contacted for one. In fact, most people won't in a country with over 308M people. If you have a sufficiently large random sample, the chances you will get results materially different from those of the target population are remote;  I've developed a feel for data from having collected and analyzed my own study data.

So today I got a mechanized poll on Tuesday's Presidential primary. And, yes, I listed Mitt Romney as my first choice, Ron Paul as my second.

On the political front, House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) announced his endorsement of Mitt Romney, a cluster of polls all showed Romney with a significant but one-digit lead in Wisconsin, Romney is up to 42% in the GOP daily tracking poll, with his largest lead (I believe) to date over Santorum, 15 points. Rasmussen yesterday showed Romney with a comfortable lead over Santorum in Maryland (as I expected, given the demographics).

Janne and Susan Kouri's First Dance 
For the Rest of Their Lives

We remember the tragic case of Christopher Reeve's tragic paralyzing fall. This is a similar story of a star college defensive lineman, an NFL prospect, whom dove head on into a hidden ocean sand-bar, snapping his spinal cord in 2 places. It's the story of a man with an indominable spirit, a woman whom has stood by the man she loves, and an innovative researcher Dr. Susan Harkema at the Frazier Rehabilitation Institute, developer of loco-motor training techniques. (God bless Dr. Harkema and various researchers and technologists seeking to create and make available enabling functionality and techniques to millions of disabled everywhere.)  This story is quintessential Americana.

Next Step Fitness is a nonprofit business which seeks to provide affordable access of relevant training and equipment to millions of disabled individuals in centers throughout the United States. For more information on how you can help Janne Kouri achieve his goals, see here.





My Choice For US Senate, Maryland: Daniel Bongino

I really haven't been paying attention to Maryland politics in this blog or even the upcoming primary. Clearly we need to get rid of that progressive empty suit, Ben Cardin, whom didn't get my vote last time around and won't this time: it's unbelievable how any one person can be wrong on every single issue! I almost dread to hear from conservatives outside of Maryland: how can I explain away the facts of Governor O'Malley, Senator Mikulski, and Senator Cardin? It's embarrassing, like being part of a family with two crazy uncles and a crazy aunt...

So over the last few days, I scanned Ballotpedia entries for the major GOP contenders and went to their campaign webpages (if a relevant link was available). I have to say, maybe I should have run: I even have my own gimmick: vote for the guy whose name you're most likely to mispronounce....

I have a pet peeve about campaign websites: I want to see an organizer where I can scan at a glance where a candidate stands on issues, straight talk and brevity, no political spin. I don't want to hear other candidates whine about, say, Bongino refusing to take this or that pledge.

Yes, I realize that some familiar readers may think I need practice brevity myself (yes, I think I can have a tendency to overexplain; I think it comes from teaching on the university level for 8 years to a heterogeneous group of students, whom sometimes weren't aware of the fact that I had answered the same question 5 minutes earlier.) But I do work at organizing my prose, streamlining my text, and identifying salient takeaways and unambiguous conclusions (I think hits to my readership several days back shows that perhaps I'm making my points a little too clear.)

What I'm trying to get at is sometimes I had to wade across a website only to discover, for instance, one candidate whom started talking about tariffs (on Chinese goods, I believe). The populist tries to spin his position by explaining Chinese trade was manipulated trade, not free: some free trade is "more equal". I have zero tolerance for sham rationalizations of protectionism. This is rather like a young man explaining to his steady girlfriend that he's still a virgin (well, except that one time, but it doesn't really count due to its brevity... ) We are so done, buddy. China is our third biggest customer, the only bigger customers being, naturally, our NAFTA partners, Canada and Mexico. In fact, I would like to see an Americas-wide free trade zone--and the more free zones, the better. I want more goods and services sold to China, not a mutually destructive trade war.

It didn't take long for me to narrow my choices to two candidates: Richard Douglas (in fact, I got a robocall earlier today with former UN ambassador John Bolton's recorded endorsement of Douglas) and Daniel Bongino. And it's fairly clear that these are the two heavyweights in the race based on newspaper columns, endorsements, and other candidate attacks. Richard Douglas has significant foreign service experience and is the clear choice of what others would call mainstream or establishment Republicans; he has won the endorsement of former Governor Ehrlich, Illinois US Senator Mark Kirk (currently rehabilitating from a recent stroke), and John Bolton, among others. Bongino is a former Secret Service agent whom has some solid Tea Party support (Senator Mike Lee and Congressman Walsh, among others)

Let me say that I would vote for a red dog as a GOP Senate nominee before I would vote for incumbent Ben "Empty Suit" Cardin. But my choice of Bongino over Douglas shouldn't surprise anyone whom read my post earlier this month over "breaking up with John McCain". I see Douglas running a McCain-like campaign; McCain, as you recall, ran a campaign largely based on his military and foreign policy expertise. Before the economic tsunami, I may very well have supported Douglas if he was running in 2008. McCain was caught flat-footed, with limited expertise on the economy. How many times must we hear Carville's voice from the 1992 election saying "It's the economy, stupid!" When I went to the Douglas website today, I found the big issue being discussed, in the context of Pope Benedict's visit to Cuba, is trying to get the Vatican's cooperation in interceding on behalf of an imprisoned Marylander. A local newspaper editorial confirms my unease: "For example, on how to improve the economy, his website states: 'The key to success is willpower, focus, courage and leadership. I offer all four. Mr. Cardin does not.'" Okay, when I'm washing my clothes, I don't particularly care for the spin cycle... If I wanted empty rhetoric, I would vote for a Democrat.

Bongino demonstrates a very good grasp of economic issues, largely consistent with this blog: serious entitlement reform, streamlined taxes and pro-growth investment policies, reforming local school monopolies, developing Maryland's natural gas resources and otherwise opening up revenue sources and relevant citizen access to natural resources. He once protected the life of an ungrateful President Obama; he now has a higher calling: protecting the unalienable rights of his fellow citizens from the stealth forced march Ben Cardin and other irresponsible progressive Democrats are leading on the road to serfdom.



Reason's March Nanny of the Month

Um, is Mayor Bloomberg sufficiently licensed to be a Big Little Nanny? (This is a libertarian inside joke...) Doesn't this crackdown on fat, salt and fiber to save the hungry from eating the wrong food sound like an army which liberates a town by destroying it (and the people whom live there)?




You See, Barack Obama is President #44,
So "Gen44" Means That Obama Owns a Generation...
(Well, They Are Certainly Indentured 
Because of His Profligate Spending...)
You Know That Government Motors Car
Running On Heavily Subsidized E85?
It's Heading Down the Road to Serfdom



Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups

Little River Band, "The Other Guy". This marks the end of my Little River Band retrospective. My next post will kick off my Doobie Brothers series.

Miscellany: 3/29/12

Quote of the Day 

The 'Inside-Out' approach to personal and self;
even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self
with your paradigms, your character, and your motives. 
The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, 
that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others. 
It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, 
to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.
Stephen Covey

Great New Romney Ad: Some Comments

The Romney campaign ad is pure political genius: the ad not only perfectly captures Obama's hubris and narcissism, but the beautiful baby represents future generations indentured by a feckless, spendthrift, profligate Obama (aka "The $5 Trillion (and Counting) Man") and his enabling Congressional Democrat crony allies.

The ad makes a questionable point about the $5T Man that I think needs a correction. From the Treasury Department:

Current	Debt Held by the Public	Intragovernmental Holdings	Total Public Debt Outstanding
03/27/2012	10,831,917,653,124.47	4,757,489,762,037.23	15,589,407,415,161.70

The Romney ad suggests that Obama has spent almost as much as all the other Presidents put together. In my March 20 post, I pointed out that Obama just eclipsed the $4.9T accrued by George W. Bush's 8 years in office, setting a new all-time American Presidential deadbeat record. But is Obama more fiscally irresponsible than all of his predecessors put together?

No, he inherited about $10.6T; but you can argue by next January, he'll probably have eclipsed all the debt that George W. Bush inherited and left Bush in the dust, despite the fact that the recession technically ended in June 2009. Note that Bush started his tenure with an 8-month recession, ended with a 13-month recession (in process), and incurred over 7 years of war funding.

However, there is a more troubling shift--from the captive funding of social security reserves to publicly held debt, and the government has to compete with other investments, which adversely affects the private sector. The key point is the category called "Intragovernmental Holdings". You know, this is the money that "Don't Worry, Be Happy" Democrats will tell you won't run out for another 20-odd years; in essence, as we have been doing for the last 2 years counting, we not only take ALL of existing employee social security taxes (and employer matches) and simply send them out to current beneficiaries--but we have to dip into the reserve to make up the difference.

Under Obama, no net contribution has been added to the reserve since 2009: in fact, excluding interest income, we've run at a deficit since 2010 (for the first time since the Reagan social security fix) and have had to dip down into the reserves because (among other things): (1) payroll tax cuts to employees, (2) accelerating Baby Boomer retirements and (3) a bumper crop of early retirees seeking shelter from a horrific jobless recession/recovery, disproportionately affecting older workers.)  At the beginning of the Obama Presidency, public-held debt was $6.3T and IGH was $4.3T. Publicly held debt has gone up just over 70%--while the reserves are up roughly 10%. Now debt is debt is debt, whether it's a Treasury note held by a mutual fund, the Chinese or Japanese, or an IOU in the social security reserve. You can argue that publicly-held debt accumulated during the Obama Administration will come close to matching nearly all the publicly-held debt through Bush, and it could be that's what the Romney campaign is referring to.

Uh-oh. Smell that? I think the new generation needs a change. In Washington DC this fall.




Timothy Sandefur/Cato Institute, 
"ObamaCare's Medicaid Mandates at SCOTUS"
Thumbs UP!

One of the issues on the third day of SCOTUS deliberations on ObamaCare was whether the sovereignty of states have been subordinated, by scope creep of a federal government's power grab, by strings on Medicaid funding. The two points I want to point out from this discussion involve (1) the Solicitor General's refusal to draw any limits on the discretion of Administrative bureaucrats (like HHS Security Sebelius), which in my judgment shows utter disregard for the Founding Fathers' concept and intent of limited federal government and (2) the issue of materiality of Medicaid funding (up to 40% or so of state budgets) and federal barriers for states to exit the Medicaid arrangement. For example, Sandefur talks about federal constraints on states' ability to control costs, even if they exited the Medicaid arrangement by, say, transferring patients to more cost-effective facilities.

NOTE: I still think that individual state regulations of health care--including various special-interest mandates, professional licensing, etc.--can be just as problematic in other aspects. What I see as a more constructive federal role in health care is to allow more of a free market among states, allowing individual policyholders to work around protectionist expensive state mandates. State-based insurers, no doubt, would quickly demand the rollback of mandates to compete in the market. The problem is that the progressive Obama Administration, instead of using interstate commerce authority to promote more of a free market among states, attempted to centralize authority and thus propagate unsustainable mandates to the states in a clear subjugation of interests as described above, a form of extortion. This creates deadweight loss for consumers because they are forced to pay for expensive optional (versus core emergency care)  benefits they don't want or need (they may later on choose to use them because they feel they're paying for them anyway--a self-fulfilling dysfunctional outcome which exacerbates inflationary pressures in the sector!)




What is Your Favorite President Obama Gaffe?
The Week Presents a Slideshow

[Obama was overheard talking] to Russia's president when he thought his microphone was off. "Give me space," Obama said. "This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility" to deal with missile defense.

Obama makes the list of 9 Presidential moments with 2 other gaffes (plus Biden's expletive overheard at the signing of ObamaCare (I also said an expletive, but it didn't get national attention)): a comment about rapper Kanye West, whom had rudely interrupted then teenage country singer Taylor Swift's video award acceptance (this is one of those rare occasions I find myself in agreement with Obama), and a tag-team insult of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with French President Sarkozy, with the Nobel Peace Prize-winning President/diplomat saying, "You're fed up, but I have to deal with him every day."

Mr. Obama, after the fall election, you'll have plenty of time--to work on your third autobiography. You're right about one thing: just like Carter, your reelection campaign will be your last.

I have issues with crony Big Defense, but I do think that Russia and China should be acutely aware that any assistance to nuclear arms proliferation is a double-edged sword (particularly with rogue groups or states). The concern, of course, is that an effective missile defense system lowers the risk associated with a first strike. But Obama knows perfectly well that Senate conservatives are concerned about the rogue nation pursuit of missile and nuclear weapon technology and will not approve any unilateral concessions, before or after an election.

What is absolutely clear is that Obama is applying an unconscionable double standard: we now know that Obama is deliberately attempting to manipulate American voters by pretending before the election that he is pro-strong defense (not wanting to deal that card away to Mitt Romney) but he'll be in a position to make unilateral concessions once he's reelected and doesn't have to worry about reelection.

Obama, you need to play it straight with the American people: if you don't believe in missile defense, have the personal integrity to stand up for your beliefs in front of the American voters, and trust them to make the right decision. As far as I'm concerned, this evidence that you are subordinating the national defense to your reelection efforts is grounds for higher scrutiny of any and all post-election treaties

Remy is Back: Health Care Is Like a Pizza
Obama Says, "Make Mine $1T With All the (Public) Works"
I Say "Health Care, It is a Chinese (Paid) Buffet
I Only Want Egg Rolls, But I Still Have to Pay"






Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups

Little River Band, "Man On Your Mind". One of my top 3 favorite LRB songs, one of my favorite singles from the 1980's.

Miscellany: 3/28/12

Quote of the Day

Blessed is he who carries within himself a God, an ideal, and obeys it.
Louis Pasteur

ObamaCare: Last Round at SCOTUS

The third and final day of unprecedented SCOTUS hearings focused on a couple of issues: (1) the Medicaid state mandate and (2) severability.

As you may recall, the 111th Congress basically wrote a check on the back of the states, whom have traditionally split the costs of health care for the poor. The Congressional Democrats wanted to raise the income eligibility for Medicaid unilaterally, forcing states to cover half the cost of newly eligible middle-income households. The states are left with little real choice but to come up with new money from some compensatory combination of higher taxes or painful budget cuts elsewhere (well, in theory I believe that states can opt out of the program, but then they would lose the current federal match, meaning they would have to make up the difference or face politically difficult deep cuts in program funding).

Clearly, the government-run programs, Medicaid and Medicare, are massive failures; the idea that the federal or state governments can micromanage prices and costs in a dynamic sector like health care is delusional. The end result is that government is reimbursing providers overall under fair market costs for services, which is an unsustainable business model.  The sheer madness of government trying to micromanage costs results in unintended consequences: for example if products or services are mispriced or are unnecessary but reimbursable. The GOP is talking about decentralizing management to the local/state levels. That's a step in the right direction, although I think we need to vest providers and policyholders in cost containment (e.g., flat pricing models and incentives for maintaining a healthy lifestyle, acting in a proactive, preventive manner, and choosing lower-priced effective providers or prescriptions), consider ways of spinning off functionality on a competitive bid basis to the private sector, and address industry barriers to entry, e.g., various medical personnel licensing. In particular, we need to disentangle any crony relationships between government and providers/vendors or labor.

The severability discussion revolves about whether the Supreme Court overturns the entire ObamaCare law or surgically kills certain aspects of it, e.g., the individual/business mandate. In particular, almost everyone realizes that the mandate is the Achilles heel of ObamaCare. If insurers don't get captive revenue by winning a mandate for healthier people to insure, they are left with no means to cover the the mandated premium-adjusted costs of those with preexisting conditions or existing catastrophic diseases or conditions (unless the government subsidizes these costs, but hypocritical progressives look to obfuscate the costs of mandates by trying to hide them--oh, the OTHER GUY has to pay--businesses, high-income earners, etc.) I find it very difficult to see how anything of ObamaCare survives if the justices rule, as many of us now suspect, the mandate is held to be unconstitutional. If you cut off funding, how does it survive in any viable form? It would be cleaner simply to invalidate the whole law. (I also think it would be a good lesson for future Congresses which abuse the democratic process: the Democrats in the 111th Congress felt given their majority they could force through a partisan law without engaging in meaningful compromise, a clear violation of the spirit and intent of Constitutional restraints, e.g., through the balance of powers.)

There are already questions over how a Supreme Court decision might effect this year's Presidential campaign. Some think that a Supreme Court judgment against Obama will give him the opportunity to say, "We tried to handle things like preexisting conditions, but..." (One obvious thing I predict is that he will unquestionably try to politicize Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United and this court case to argue that he needs to select the next Supreme Court justice.) No, I think an adverse decision will simply confirm the public sentiment against ObamaCare. I believe that the President will pay a price for defying public sentiment in forcing the legislation through on a partisan vote. The issue isn't whether there are some popular benefits in ObamaCare, but the process, the costs, and the bureaucracy.




CATO Institute/Michael Cannon, 
"IPAB: ObamaCare's Next Constitutional Hurdle"
Thumbs UP!

May I suggest a subheading? "IPAB:  More than Just a Death Panel". The idea that a bare majority of House Democrats passed a bill that imposes a supermajority of Congress to set aside the rules, regulations, taxes, etc. imposed by an unelected, unaccountable board is nothing short of a moral outrage. We already see Congress ceding too much power to, say, the Federal Reserve or the Executive Branch (and heaven help us if the American public reelects a final-term Obama, no longer accountable to the people except through articles of impeachment) The idea that the 111th Congress, which barely passed ObamaCare in the House with a supermajority of Democrats, effectively empowers a Senate Democratic minority a backdoor approach (through proxies on IPAB) to impose their industrial policy agenda, flipping the filibuster on its head--and binds the hands of future Congresses in restricting or even repealing the board?

(Granted, Cannon doesn't himself speak in terms of passive-aggressive, back-door political agendas, but I noticed that the emperor is wearing no clothes. This effectively does to the Executive Branch what the progressives have been doing to the Judicial Branch for years: appointing activist jurists whom are little more than sophistic de facto progressive lawmakers.)

A key reason health insurance by state has become so dysfunctional is because of the ability of special interests to get expensive mandates enacted; the state engages in protectionist practices (which I think is counter to how the Constitution was implemented to encourage a free market among the states, e.g., by limiting taxing authority in interstate commerce) by not allowing residents to opt out of mandates by shopping for "no-frills" or alternative policies across states. (The Democrats routinely dismiss barebones packages as a "race to the bottom", but then have the audacity to complain about the high cost of insurance!)  Now the special interests don't have to propagate their agenda across 50 states: they have a centralized point of corruption! All they have to do is convince a publicly unaccountable 15-person (or less) board to issue an edict. Congress' power is reduced to the reactive role of playing Whack a Mole against an authoritarian-by-default gusher of rules, regulations, mandates, pricing decisions, etc. I mean, if the Congress on its own has lacked the political will to stand up to the special interests directly in making necessary reforms (e.g., fraud prevention) under rules of a simple majority, how is it going to come up with a super majority to block IPAB edicts?

You would think that Congress would know by now that statist interventionist policies in the health care sector are part of the problem, not the solution, and the answer to the problems is not to shift from inept republican lawmaking to unaccountable authoritarianism but to privatize the programs, to rollback nonessential regulations and mandates, and to cap any government disbursements to the sector to fiscally sustainable amounts.

I think Cannon's commentary here is one of the most powerful ones I've ever embedded as a guest editorial. Highly recommended.



Political Potpourri

CNN came out with an oddball poll today that showed Romney losing by 10 points to Obama--and Obama's percentage of the vote higher than his approval rating! This is out of touch with reality: in fact, I would argue that that Obama's approval rate will be higher than his percentage of the vote. I think his approval rating reflects a high personal favorable rating, but I think that voters will hold him accountable for a weak economy, unprecedented deficits, unfulfilled expectations and divisive politics (after promising a post-partisan Washington). I fully expect Romney (the presumptive GOP nominee) to inherit essentially all of McCain's votes--46% of the vote. All he needs is 3 to 4 independent or moderate disaffected Obama voters out of 53. I think Obama will have a discouraged base--broken campaign promises, a likely GOP Congress not supportive of his agenda (e.g., immigration), etc. Just think of idealistic college students 4 years ago finding it very difficult to find decent jobs in this economy.

Dick Morris wrote a recent email, pointing out even if Massachusetts and Maine's Senate seats flip to the Dems, a number of seats once thought to be out of reach of the GOP, e.g., Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, and even Connecticut seem in play. I've seen separate polls (including the McClatchy/Marist) confirming a slight pulling of the GOP away from the Dems in the generic Congressional ballot. We are still almost 7 months until election day, and that can be a lifetime in politics, but a reason I'm mentioning that is because I think that  it is highly unlikely that voters will toss out Democratic incumbent Senators in purple states while voting to keep Obama in office. And I also think it's possible you could see something happen to Obama not unlike what happened to Carter in 1980.

Romney continues to hold steady at about 39% of the vote in the Gallup GOP Presidential daily tracking poll. Right now even Rasmussen has Romney behind in a few battleground states, but I think in part that has to do with the bitterly divisive GOP campaign. Romney and Obama have been routinely changing places in the Rasmussen polls. Romney seems to be within striking distance in Pennsylvania, Santorum's home state, and if Romney pulls off a probable hat trick next Tuesday in Wisconsin, Maryland, and DC, I think Romney will get a come-from-behind victory, not unlike his victory in Ohio.

I personally haven't see fresh Maryland polls, but Maryland residents, including many people whom work inside the Beltway, tend to be higher-income and better-educated, and Santorum has routinely underperformed in that demographic. I also think that also holds true for the few GOP voters in the DC area.

My intuition tells me that Romney should get at least 60% of the 98 delegates up next Tuesday, pushing him past the halfway point towards the nomination, somewhere in the range of 630 delegates (of the 1144 needed) and give him the momentum going into a favorable cluster of primaries in late April. The terrain gets a little better for Santorum going into May, but he already faces all but impossible odds in needing to capture over 70% of remaining delegates; we know, for instance, that Santorum isn't going to win delegate-rich California, New York, or Utah, and even if Romney loses a few states, he will still pick up runner up delegates.

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups

Little River Band, "Take It Easy On Me"

Miscellany: 3/27/12

Quote of the Day 

I don't know the key to success, 
but the key to failure is trying to please everyone.

Bill Cosby

ObamaCare: Round Two at SCOTUS

I also have a nutrition blog, and let me frankly say: I like broccoli. It's my favorite low-carb vegetable. I like it raw; I like it steamed; I like it prepared in cheese sauce. I had some today before I heard that Anthony Scalia and John Roberts discussed whether the government could mandate the purchase of broccoli. (I have no doubt the First Lady was all ears on the discussion of this issue.)  I can only imagine the shock of George HW Bush, whose dislike for the wonderful crustaceous vegetable is well-documented. I can just hear the former President doing Dana Carvey doing him: "Wouldn't be prudent... Never going to eat it... Not at this juncture." To paraphrase Evelyn Beatrice Hall quoting Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say about broccoli, but I will defend to the death your right not to eat it."

I have repeatedly stated that the Democrats overplayed their hand on health care. The more problematic issue is NOT that up to 15% or more of the population doesn't have health care insurance. Just because you have uninsured people doesn't mean they aren't responsible for their ongoing health care expenses: they're just not doing it through a third party. Excluding catastrophic expenses, many people may find that it's a lot cheaper to pay expenses out of pocket than to pay, say, $14,000 a year for coverage. (And, in fact, progressives have resisted the point McCain was making back in 2008: provide equal protection of tax benefits for people not currently in a tax-advantaged employer plan. Either everyone should have tax benefits or nobody. If anything, I would argue against a tax-free basis, since I believe government subsidies have a corrupting influence on the health care market, with dysfunctional side effects, e.g., "free" goods or services.) I think the chickens have come home to roost on government meddling in health care and the recent credit and real estate bubbles; I don't have to tell the reader about the economic tsunami, the result of poor results from the corrupting effect of industrial policy in banking (with public and private sectors both playing roles).  The government now has literally dozens of trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities for senior-citizen benefits--and we have $2-3T of annual revenue to pay for ALL government expenditures.

I have repeatedly addressed the better, more focused basis: catastrophic diseases or conditions, often resulting in medical bankruptcy. (And, surprise, surprise, most of those people have held health insurance, at least at the beginning of treatment.) I've also pointed out that the government could make improved pricing information available (on procedures, prescriptions, etc.). Mark J. Perry in Carpe Diem spotlights a current story where a New Hampshire city and employees shared a portion of cost savings from an elective program offering lower-cost alternative providers to the policyholder's doctor's recommendation.

To hear the Solicitor General dance around the question of what Constitutional limits, if any, to Congressional meddling in the economy, was amusing: he predictably argued that the health care industry was "more equal".

The SCOTUS justices are well-known for liking to swerve observers, by sometimes playing the role of devil's advocate. So one should always temper one's expectations, but I've read a number of news reports which seemed to agree, across the board, that the Solicitor General had a bad day at the office.

I would like to think that the justices realize that the partisan-controlled Congress and President passed a highly unpopular ObamaCare on a strictly partisan basis with corrupt bargaining and kaleidoscope accounting to intentionally dupe the American people, political malpractice and fraud of the highest order. You would hope that the justices realize that the very fact of ObamaCare is a perversion of the spirit and intent of the US Constitution on any reasonable basis.

I will comment on IBAP in a subsequent post (Cato's Michael Cannon has a current podcast on the topic--he has written on IBAP before (most populist conservatives know IBAP by Sarah Palin's nickname for it: death panel)). I need to count to a few thousand before commenting about it; I previously blackboxed the board thinking it might be something like the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission. I now view IBAP as sort of the Democrats' long-dreaded sequel to the Federal Reserve: if you love how the Fed handled financial crises, just wait until you see what IBAP does to health care....




Cato Institute vs. the Koch Brothers

I made a passing comment in a post on the dispute between the Kansas oil barons and one of the top libertarian think tanks, indicating that I sided with the embattled Cato Institute management; I should also note that one of Cato Institute's founders was Charles Koch. The Koch brothers are looking to become the primary owner of Cato and replace its existing management team. I want to first point out that I am well-aware that the far left has made the Koch brothers their poster boys, and my decision to support current management in its dispute has nothing to do with national politics: it has more to do with the perception of the loss of independence. David Koch has responded elsewhere, but I am not persuaded. (Of course, to many libertarians, I'm not a "real" libertarian and should mind my own business.)

I have to point out that there is a personal side to this story. I have a relative, of all things a closet liberal, whom works at Koch Industries. In the aftermath of 9/11, my Oracle DBA consulting prospects had dried up as the Chicago area lost more white-collar jobs than any other region in the country (particularly after the Arthur Andersen/Enron scandal). If you didn't have a long-term contract (like the major consulting companies), you were in trouble; I think I heard something like 100-200 smaller consulting companies went under.

I was contacted by some recruiter looking to staff this project doing an Oracle ERP upgrade project somewhere in Kansas. (In my experience, most recruiters won't reveal the company's name until the gig is nailed down, probably a defensive effort to ensure that I don't work around them.) I had done a string of relevant upgrade projects and didn't mind (unlike a lot of consultants) traveling to Kansas. It was as close in this business as there is to the gig being a sure thing.

Finally, we were heading down the home stretch, and he revealed the client's name: Koch Industries. I think I was in the process of nailing down travel arrangements when I decided to call my relative and clue him in. We would not be working together on this project (he's an engineer), but I figured that we might meet for lunch on occasion and he probably wanted me over to the house maybe for a weekend or two (rather than my flying home). Far from being happy for me, my relative was alarmed, rambling about some nepotism policy at the company. That seemed irrelevant, because there had been no interim contact with my relative, whom was totally unfamiliar with my work history and I would have been working in the IT division. I had absolutely no interest in post-project employment with Koch Industries or living in Kansas, and the topic had not even been raised by my recruiter. I saw it as a win-win: I needed a gig, and Koch would get the best Apps DBA consultant in the business at a bargain rate.

And then everything went absolutely dead. The recruiter failed to acknowledge any further contact (probably  for legal reasons). I was left scrambling to cancel travel arrangements without even the benefit of a form letter rejection. Years later the relative called me up, wanting to let me know that Koch Industries had finally revised their nepotism policy. (Yeah, no problem with brothers running a company together--it's other employee relatives that the Koch brothers were concerned about.) I politely suggested to my relative that the Koch brothers should do something anatomically impossible. I would rather mop floors for a living than work for the Koch brothers. They could offer me a multi-million dollar contract to serve as a Cato Institute board member, and I would tell them to go visit UBL.

Back off, Koch brothers. Any attempt to takeover Cato Institute will be a pyrrhic victory. I will immediately take Cato Institute off my blogroll if the Koch brothers succeed and will follow the current management if they start a separate institute. (I doubt my blogroll results in a material impact on visitors to the websites, but the move would be more symbolic in nature.)  This has nothing to do with the past, or the brothers' personal disagreements with Cato Institute management.

NPR/Peter Overby, "Koch Brothers Move To Control Cato Institute"


Trayvon Martin and a Failed President

I generally avoid discussing race issues in this blog. Most Franco-Americans are naturally sympathetic to the issues of racial/ethnic tolerance. As I mentioned in a post around the time of Obama's inauguration, Franco-Americans during the Quebec diaspora of the nineteenth and early twentieth century were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan in the Northeast (What can you say? We were newly immigrated; most of us grew up speaking French as our first language (including myself),  and we were Catholic (we have large families out of ignorance, of course: we don't know how to control ourselves...): we were like the KKK's version of a hat trick.)  Of course, not all Franco-Americans look alike: my family members have blue eyes (except one sister whom has green), we're fair-skinned  and have blond, ash blond, or light brown hair. (If you saw my third grade picture, I was blond with natural curls.) Yes, it's hard to believe, but I was once considered cute: Mrs. Darby used to call me her 'boy doll'. Lisa was her 'girl doll', and I had an unrequited crush on Lisa. I still have her Valentine's Day card stored in my trunk. It was just easier later to tell people I have brown hair. The curls were often more of a curse; one of my freshman teachers, an assistant basketball coach, nicknamed me "Einstein", which seemed to stick: a clear reference to my academic prowess and unruly hairstyle.

Anyway, I can remember at an early age my Mom talking to me about the underground railroad. My fifth- or sixth-grade class at a Franco-American parish in east Fall River had adopted a family of color in Washington DC. (We stayed with my grandfather while Dad was securing family housing at his new assignments.)  My best friend in fifth grade was an Air Force African-American boy.

Are my life experiences similar to people of color? Obviously not. But I do recall a few times where I was treated differently. For example, my best friend at OLL was a Latino education major. I had applied to graduate school at UT, and UT recruiters were coming to recruit at OLL. Ramon agreed to accompany me to one of these meet-and-greet's; I believe that Ramon had closed on a teaching position somewhere near home in Texas and wasn't interested in graduate school. The UT recruiters were swarming around Ramon like he was Miss Universe on a USO tour while completely ignoring me. Ramon was embarrassed and did his best to redirect their attention to me, to no avail. I appreciated the efforts to recruit my Latino friends, but they could have been a little more subtle. I also didn't like the way I was treated by some Brazilians while I worked for a few months in Brazil in 1995; what's worse is that they thought stupid Americans couldn't understand what they were saying in Portuguese.

I probably wouldn't even be writing this commentary in the first place except for the fact that David Plouffe on the Sunday talk shows decided to attack Newt Gingrich personally for the fact that Gingrich criticized (as I also did earlier) the President personalizing the Trayvon Martin incident, by inexcusably saying something as irresponsible as Trayvon looked like the son Barack and Michelle never had.

What have we seen since then? A certain lynch mob mentality against Zimmerman. The new Black Panthers reportedly are talking militias and a $10K bounty on Zimmerman. We have shameless demagogues like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton stepping out to claim their usual 15 minutes of fame. We have federal and state investigations, including allegations of hate crimes.

Where was Obama's leadership? When was he talking about Zimmerman's right to a fair trial and due process? What did he do to get the other side of the story? We are talking about a former lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago: where in his rhetoric was Obama discussing a "balanced approach"? He was, in fact, prosecutor, judge and jury; he was aiding and abetting a destabilizing environment that made any fair trial of Zimmerman all but impossible.

All I said early on was that the accused killer, Mr. Zimmerman, a Latino, was entitled to due process under the Constitution, that what we had heard to date was Zimmerman was pursuing Martin against a dispatcher's advice and claiming to kill Martin in self-defense, which didn't seem to make sense. I still had an uncomfortable feeling about the lack of information from the accused and police.

We are now getting information  from Zimmerman and the police which provides a plausible explanation:

• Zimmerman claims that Martin ambushed him outside of his vehicle, repeatedly struck him and/or slammed his head against the ground, leading him to bleed; Martin then made a play for Zimmerman's weapon when Zimmerman managed to keep control and shot at Martin in self-defense
• There are unidentified witnesses to Martin's battery of Zimmerman, and police report seeing fresh wounds on Zimmerman's head.

I should point out that Martin's mother has strongly objected to these accounts.

I think Mr. Zimmerman has a reputation for repeatedly contacting the police and probably was a little overzealous in his duty on watch, but to the best of my knowledge has no prior record of violence. It doesn't seem to make sense Zimmerman would alert the police prior to killing Martin in cold blood.

If the allegation of Martin's beating Zimmerman is true (I could easily see how some people might not like the way other people are looking at them and seek to address the behavior directly), I would suspect that it's not the first physical confrontation: Martin probably has a "tough guy" reputation at school or in the neighborhood, probably with a quick temper and no-nonsense attitude. Assuming the allegations of Zimmerman's head being repeatedly struck on the ground are true, it's hard to believe Zimmerman was the one and only victim of Martin's abuse.

Is Zimmerman innocent? I'm not sure; I certainly think we have to question his zealous pursuit of Martin and others and his reluctance to wait for the police to do their job. But what I am sure of is the fact that there was a rush to judgment, and President Obama did not wait to hear the other side of the story before seeming to judge Zimmerman and playing the race card, which is irresponsible and morally unacceptable.

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups

Little River Band, "Night Owl"

Miscellany: 3/26/12

Quote of the Day  

Great men are they who see that the spiritual is stronger than any material force.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

ObamaCare: Round One at SCOTUS

There is a sophistic argument going on here: Obama initially insisted that penalties for failing to purchase health care insurance as required under ObamaCare were not taxes. However, usually SCOTUS gives broad discretion of Congress' authority to tax; among other things, if this is treated as a tax, the "tax" cannot be challenged until the tax is actually assessed (i.e., a couple of years from now): the 1867 Anti-Injunction Act. Yes, professional sports fans, those fees assessed for doing the wrong thing are "taxes". Even the liberal justices like Justice Ginsburg see through this charade. Yes, indeed, soon our court system would be full of judges assessing "taxes" on convicted defendants.

Let us remember what this mandate stuff is really all about: it's a perverse consequence of progressive policies, like no-drop coverage and guaranteed issue. For example, if we guarantee issue at capped premiums, people can "hit-and-run" by using insurance as a way to socialize their expenses for the duration of treatment. The costs of the poorer health risks get passed onto healthier risks; given the opportunity, healthier risks will attempt to find coverage at rates more commensurate with their lower costs or opt to self-insure, and it becomes a vicious circle.

Progressive policies sound reasonable in theory, but they impose an unsustainable business model in an industry that is low margin. Businesses must control their risks (e.g., a cap on lifetime expenses). You do not help small businesses obtain insurance if the insurer doesn't have a viable means of reinsuring against the disproportionate impact of catastrophic expenses, where even one policyholder's medical expenses can affect overall profitability. There are more equitable ways of spreading the risks against a larger population (e.g., through a low consumption tax, a medical services surtax, etc.)

The insurers find themselves in an impossible, unsustainable situation: aggregate premiums not covering expenses. They need for the state in essence to reimburse them for burdensome policy regulations. There are a couple of ways the government can handle this (well, beyond the obvious steps of cost recovery from freeloaders and reforming or revoking policy): they can directly subsidize the care of those unprofitable risks; or they can compel captive revenue for insurers by mandating coverage.

There are a number of issues I have with the concept of mandates; I do not pretend the list is exhaustive. First, there is the concept of economic liberty. If I choose to pay my medical expenses à la carte, without paying for an insurance middleman, why should anyone care? Second, there's the deadweight loss to consumers: for example, the state forces me to buy very expensive insurance with crony special interest mandates, whether I want or need them. Third, there are high compliance/administrative costs, none of which contribute directly to health care. Fourth, the concept of a mandate is intrinsically inefficient: since the product must be purchased, as an insurer, I have little motive to cut costs or improve services since costs can be documented to the industry regulator. Moreover, if  as a policyholder, I'm entitled to goods or services as a result of insurance, I may overuse said offerings (which I might not purchase if I was paying for them piecemeal).  Finally, there is the slippery slope and the principle of equal protection: why are we singling out a single industry for intrinsically corrupting government protection?

Would these be compelling arguments from a SCOTUS standpoint? I suspect not: competent economics is not a strong suit of SCOTUS... If SCOTUS did admit economic and political arguments, defeat of ObamaCare would be inevitable: if we could only introduce the reality of the deliberately misleading budgetary analyses, the precedence of the federal government's spendthrift ways and existing Ponzi scheme entitlements, the unsustainability of federal spending, even without ObamaCare....



Sunday Talk Soup

The last time David Plouffe, Obama political adviser, showed his head on the Sunday talk shows, I refuted his talking points in detail. I'm getting a little tired of end-to-end political spin. So let's just take a few points:

• Gasoline Prices, "All-of-the-Above" Energy. Plouffe is predictable: Obama takes credit for increased oil production, even though (undisclosed to the public, of course) most of the increased production is not from federal property and we have sharply lower drilling permit approvals across the board (in particular, since the BP oil spill). We could talk about an aggressive EPA, concerns about lizards in Texas, restrictions in terms of drilling distance from shore, drilling off blue state coastal areas, no headway on the oil shale-rich Green River and various other issues, e.g., discussed here. As for "all-of-the-above", I've never believed in this political spun nonsense; alternative energy sources are notoriously infeasible compared to low-cost natural gas and other fossil fuels. Plouffe seems to think that we have forgotten the Solyndra and other failures. The disingenuous Obama Administration, as its usual pattern, even tries to deflect blame for Solyndra, even though the Bush Administration did NOT approve the Solyndra loans (what do we expect from a feckless, profligate Obama Administration whose only idea of  "leadership" is  throwing good money after bad, repeating the historical errors and folly of FDR's ineffectual, failed Keynesian policies?) "All of the above" is merely a restatement of what should already exist: a free market in energy production and distribution, not an inefficient, manipulated market controlled by delusional, megalomaniac statists; the main point is that Plouffe and Obama are in a state of denial about what this country can do, deeply in debt with a weak economy and too many obligations on a government's limited income.
• The Progressive Catchphrase "Balanced Approach".  What pathetic, disingenuous pieces of work! This goes beyond propaganda.  The Senate Democrats for YEARS have failed to pass a budget, Obama's own budgets are dead on arrival in Congress. Plouffe references "spending cuts" which really aren't cuts, but 10 years of accounting gimmicks on planned future year budget INCREASES, with most of the pain deferred past the Obama Presidency. This President, early in the fourth year of his administration, has already piled on more debt than Bush did over 8 years (with two recessions and funding over 7 years of war): it's like getting two Bushes for the price of one!  Plouffe and Obama's "balanced approach" means stealing more money from people whom already pay record taxes twice in proportion to their share of national income--and only those people. What about the "shared sacrifice" from the lower 99%? Obama PRETENDS that they have sacrificed something.... Raising tax rates on the economically successful is counterproductive: you don't grow an economy by raising the cost of doing business and investing.

Political Potpourri

Romney picked up 5 Louisiana delegates to Santorum's 10, which leaves Romney a mere handful of delegates away from the halfway point (572) needed for the nomination. Santorum has 273. (In fact, Romney has earned slightly more than half the delegates decided to date, more than all his opponents put together.) Intrade now pegs Romney's winning the GOP nomination at 91%, and all upcoming primaries (including Maryland and Wisconsin) showing over 90% probable Romney victories; even Santorum's home state of Pennsylvania rates a 65% probable Romney win. Gallup tracking showed a slight dip of Romney to 39% vs. Santorum's 27%.

Santorum over the weekend is still trying to explain away his unacceptable remarks at an appearance last Thursday: "You win by giving people a choice. You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who's just going to be a little different than the person in there. If they're going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk of what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate for the future." [Etch A Sketch is the unfortunate sound bite given by a Romney strategist (Eric Fehrnstrom), suggesting that Romney would position himself differently during the general election.]

Dishonorable; pathetic. Santorum here is saying that there's no real difference between Obama and Romney. Just a reminder to my readers: RomneyCare and Romney's position shifts were known and a political issue well before Santorum endorsed Romney for President in 2008 (yes, against Obama). Romney's record and positions aren't any different then than they are now--the only difference is that Santorum is throwing Romney under the bus to promote his own doomed candidacy against Obama.

Romney isn't going to respond in kind, so I have a response for Santorum: perhaps as a lawyer, a professional career politician (on the federal level for 16 years) and a former US Senator, without no substantive business or administrative experience,  just like a certain Barack Obama, you think you offer a difference--never mind you both supported the Bridge to Nowhere, you both supported deficit spending during the 2000's, you both supported Medicare's new drug prescription benefit, and you both agreed to the liberal show of US military force in the Middle East and Gulf region?

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups

Little River Band, "Cool Change". Hands down, my all-time favorite LRB song, and a personal favorite.

Miscellany: 3/25/12

Quote of the Day 

Let us be grateful to the mirror
for revealing to us our appearance only.
Samuel Butler

Legislating Away the Right To Smoke a Legal Product?

If it isn't New York trying to micromanage your life, then it has to be California....

Personally, I've never been tempted to smoke cigarettes or marijuana. I can still remember that my Dad smoked when I was really young (like preschool age). My guess is that he probably picked up the bad habit while he was on his isolated tour in Korea (before my folks got married). I think he kicked the habit well before I hit my teens. My maternal grandfather and uncle used to smoke a cigar on Sunday afternoons; cigar smoke smelled a lot better, and of course I liked the little cigar rings. I also remember a sister-in-law's mother was living in the basement of my brother's house in the far Chicago southern suburbs. My brother invited me to stay overnight one day--I think they had a second bedroom in the basement, and somehow I ran into the mother-in-law smoking. She begged me not to tell; it wasn't my brother she was worried about but her daughter (whom tolerated her mom's smoking but only outside). (I think the late mother-in-law eventually developed some sort of cancer. I don't think it was lung cancer; I suspect though it was related to her smoking.)

Personally, I think smoking is a disgusting habit, and I hope that if any of my readers are smokers, they will think twice about the long-term risks to their behavior. I'm sure when my nephew recently graduated from college he wished that his maternal grandmother had lived to see it.

But I don't believe in requiring restaurant, hotel or apartment owners to micromanage the personal habits of their customers. So long as as their smoking patrons aren't invading my personal breathing space, I don't care.

[Note: an embedded video should appear immediately below this paragraph; I've noticed that sometimes it's necessary to view this post standalone to see the video (click on the time/date link at the bottom or the post link on the right).]

New Blog Posts

I published posts in all 3 blogs over the weekend, including an earlier one today for this blog.

Remembering John Horse and the Black Seminoles

I believe the text from this video actually stems from a 2007 article in Reason. I've been hinting at a series of commentaries talking about Presidents (and almost-Presidents). Andrew Jackson is another in a series of what I regard as an overrated President. I think many of the things that happened to Indians at Jackson's hand  were genuinely morally outrageous. For more information on John Horse's leadership in migrating his people to freedom in Mexico, see here.



Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups

Little River Band, "Lonesome Loser"  I love this variation on The Eagles' "Desperado", one of my all-time favorites (especially the indominable spirit of resilient guys whom repeatedly brush off rejection). Of course, I think (along with "The Immigrant"), the relevant "Solitaire" is one of my favorite Sedaka tracks. (I think I first heard it sung by the late AWESOME Karen Carpenter. I used to pretend that she was singing it about me. RIP, sweet angel. I remember. Always.)