New ideas are as valuable as any others,
but they should not be adopted
simply because they are new.
Robert Heller
The "Caveman Blogger" Won His Case on Appeal
I touched on this topic briefly in my latest nutrition blog post; I knew about the case but wasn't aware that the case was resolved earlier this summer.
The "diabetes warrior" blogger Steve Cooksey, represented by one of my favorite libertarian organizations, the Institute for Justice, won a case as a North Carolina dietetics board tried to shut him down, a classic anti-competitive tactic. The district court sustained the licensing board but was overturned on appeal.
Warren Buffett Is No Son of Congressman Howard Buffett (R-NE)
Of course, Warren is the biological son of Howard. But I'm sure the elder Buffett, whom was a libertarian pro-gold standard, fiscal hawk, anti-interventionist/draft, Old Right anti-New Deal Republican whom served as 1952 Presidential campaign manager for the best twentieth century senator, Robert Taft, must be rolling over in his grave over his son sucking up to the most radically "progressive", economically illiterate, anti-business President since FDR, providing political cover for divisive class warfare politics. I think Warren Buffett diverged from his father, whom others have regarded as the Ron Paul of his time, on politics in his salad days but waited until after his dad passed away to identify with Democrats.
An iTunes Screw-Up
Normally I might discuss this in my third blog which deals with software/usability issues, but since I have talked about poor policy usability issues, this is an excellent example.
Despite Apple's reputation for innovative usable products, I've found some usability issues with iTunes itself. I remember I once had an email thread with somebody from Apple Support; I don't recall the specifics, but I've never liked rudimentary functionality for user customization or to support, e.g., playlists. (I also find upgrades routinely more troublesome than for most Windows programs.) What I remember from the exchange is that I had made some concrete suggestions to pass along to the developers. The response to me was something to the effect that if I wanted to submit suggestions, Apple has hoops I need to jump through, and it wasn't his/her responsibility to forward my suggestions. I also seem to remember a defensive attitude and state of denial common to poor customer support analysts, e.g., "You are the first person ever to report such a problem." Epic failure, and if it was up to me, grounds for termination; a bad tech support analyst tarnishes the company brand. To give a classic example from my Oracle experience, I once attended an "Oracle University" class, and I was sitting in the next to last row--and the last row was populated by Oracle Support analysts. Most of us in the class were Oracle DBA's, and the week-long class probably cost the DBA or the DBA's company some $3000 (not including travel expenses, etc.) These back-row clowns were swapping "dumb DBA" war stories: totally unprofessional and unacceptable.
Over the past week, there was a major upgrade to iTunes, which included podcast stations. Now as many familiar readers know, I subscribe to a number of podcasts, including Sunday talk soup, Cato Institute, Econtalk, Redeye, and O'Reilly. I have been used to using the podcast list mode, often cleaning up episodes I've heard (right-click, delete); on occasion I've had to to unsubscribe and resubscribe to a podcast and/or I accidentally fat-fingered a podcast.
When I did my upgrade and went to list mode, I suddenly noticed that old deleted podcast episodes had magically reappeared. (I suspect this is to let the podcast subscriber know that the episode is available for streaming and/or download from the cloud/Internet.) Now if the latter is the case, I wouldn't mind a separate podcast cloud player view, but the idea to change the look and feel of the legacy podcast list mode is appalling, including missing delete episode functionality. There is a new (at least in my usage) My Podcast view which seems to emulate a cleaned up podcast listing, but it's clear that I'm not the only one to notice. I believe this is a relevant threat of disgruntled podcast users I stumbled across the other day.
Reason vs. Politicians Willing to Sell Out Our Liberties
Political Cartoon
I am sympathetic to both of the latter bubbles. Obama and the Democrats have a perspective that is both morally outrageous and indefensible and contrary to common sense over the debt limit. By any reasonable basis, we are over the credit limit and it's difficult to see how we are going to pay off $17T ; we've got by some accounts of between $80-200T in unfunded entitlement liabilities (not even counting Medicaid share or ObamaCare) and haven't run even a surplus since 9/11. I can still remember investors back during the surplus period (note: much of the surplus involved net social security contributions, which by law must underwrite government operational deficits, a morally corrupt policy: it reinforces profligate spending) fretting about what would happen if we run out of publicly-held debt.... As if the Congress is noted for frugal spending of the people's money! But just like any lower/middle-class family knows, if your credit cards are maxed out, you have to cut your expenses, and you may have to sell property or get an emergency loan at high interest rates: you have to pay more to compensate the lender for the nontrivial case you won't be able to make payments given your other obligations.
I read one financial newsletter writer whom speculated that the reason for the Fed's decision not to taper its aggressive bond-buying program is the likely result of the Fed not placing effectively a put on interest rates, i.e., rises in federal bond interest rates (fewer buyers) and exploding interest payments, which would cause severe budget pressures. I don't think that's what the Fed is worried about in terms of fiscal policy: I think they are more worried about drops in government spending, in a neo-Keynesian "broken window fallacy" perspective. But government spending is basically an overrated, disingenuous shell game, that seizes funds from the private sector, today and the future. That noncompetitive government spending is more effectively spent than the private sector is pure hubris; all it does is attract special-interest parasites, not unlike insects hovering about a garbage dump.
We have been seeing claims by the Obama Administration of many potential policyholders being charged under ObamaCare for under $100 a month. This is knowing crap. As I recall, around 2008 the average household policy was around $15K per year, and premium cost increases have been accumulating since the passage of ObamaCare. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
It's clear why most Republicans are making a stand here; it has nothing to do with "obstruction politics"; they know once subsidies have taken a foothold, it becomes like all unsustainable programs, almost invulnerable to political attack, like social security and Medicare, policies from actuarial hell. In fact, I think the Democrats know it and are hoping for a collapse, which they hope will lead to a populist uprising for a single-payer system; Majority Leader Reid all but acknowledged the same.
I think the real story in the House voting to defund ObamaCare is about putting Senate Democrats on the spot for the upcoming mid-terms. I suspect they'll eventually offer a short-term continuing resolution, because the real battle is policy, and that will be possibly resolved in the mid-terms; Obama is able to some extent to shift funding to his priorities. I think it would be harder for the Senate and White House to object to strict funding caps and a higher degree of transparency to the program.
I'm not sure that a stalemate would be nearly a political winner for the Dems that the mainstream media is or will promote over the weeks ahead; for one thing, Gallup shows that the media's approval is just off an all-time low; Gallup also has Obama at under 45% approval and a net disapproval rating. I also clipped the following news item: "According to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Americans oppose raising the debt ceiling by two-to-one. The poll shows a 44% to 22% margin opposing." I think, at minimum, the House needs to keep The Spendthrift One on a short leash; the price to not making a deal is going to be Obama will have to deal with a series of short-term funding deals--which he politically can't afford to veto.
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Courtesy of Steve Breen and Townhall |
Boyz II Men, "On Bended Knee"
