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"