Fear not for the future,
weep not for the past.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
ObamaCare Roundup
- Self-Delusional DNC Chief: Debbie Wasserman-Schultz: "Democrats will run on the Affordable Care Act and win," You can't make this stuff up; she really did say that.... Go ahead, Wasserman-Schultz; the GOP may help you fund the ads... No, I don't nominate a Democrat for JOTY for being clueless, but I may initiate a mock award for politicians saying something stupid, and she will instantly qualify. There's no doubt that poor health risks have every incentive to sign up for below market premiums--the issue is whether young/healthy people will sign up at a significant price above market prices for their risks--or pay a $95 fine. Will they simply wait until they are very sick and take advantage of no pre-existing conditions enrollment? I know what I would have done in my salad days as a low-paid professional out of college
- 10 Senate Democrats signed a letter calling for an additional deferment (beyond the end of March extension the White House has granted) for the individual mandate enrollment. (Sen. Manchin has separately called for a year extension.) Almost all the senators in question are up for reelection over the next 2 cycles in red or purple states. Go back and re-read the first item. I wonder if the Hypocrite-in-Chief will demand that Harry Reid put the proposal on the floor for a vote (referring to Obama's frequent dares for Speaker Boehner to put a so-called clean CR up for vote during the recent shutdown). The reason why they won't is because the system will run a large deficit if healthy people won't sign up for overpriced "insurance".
- Politico is reporting that the infamous IT glitches are not the only problems: it extends to mail and phone alternatives. I know I recently ad libbed something to that effect, anticipating the problem in a recent post: "But the truth is those applications — on paper or by phone have to get entered into the same lousy website that is causing the problems in the first place." I have to say as an MIS academic and IT professional, I deeply resent the implication that these type of glitches go with the territory in IT. HELL, NO! Not only is this level of incompetence unprecedented in my personal experience, especially in the private sector, I've never seen it on any project I've been involved with on the local, county, state or federal government level. I have been on some projects which had up to 8 separate development and test database instances before any patch, upgrade or installed application went live (to users or the general public). We typically go through multiple dry runs (with actual users), we stress-test the application, etc. Does that mean you never run into an issue? No (it largely depends on how rigorous and complete your testing protocol)--but you don't run into these kinds of gross functional issues. I heard some government IT guy say something to the effect that in light volumes, they didn't run into these problems--but scaleability has been a known issue in IT for literally decades. I'm going to repeat an anecdote familiar readers may recall; I was working for a privately-held company which was eventually acquired by a large credit rating service. Management explicitly excluded me from a project being designed to cut a flatfile of several million mail list records. The team spent several weeks on the project with trial runs. I remember they were going to run the job over the Fourth of July weekend. I got a desperate call from management on the holiday, pleading for my help. (I know they were afraid that I was going to say "I told you so".) It turned out their approach was generating roughly 1 record every 15 minutes; they had never tested their solution for scaleability. I literally designed a totally different approach off the top of my head, and they had their 10M records well before the Monday deadline. I'm not saying the problems with the government website are comparable in nature or as quickly resolved, but I'm saying this rollout was shockingly incompetently done--it's like they went live with a bad initial stage development application and rushed it into production, not ready for primetime. This to me is more than a political issue; it grossly violates standards I taught as a professor and followed as an employee or consultant. It's embarrassing to the profession.
(from Tom Woods) These poor kids say their econ department is too free market, and won't teach them enough Keynes or Marx so they can better understand the financial crisis, which they say was caused by the "free market." My reply: bit.ly/17gYPRM
They confound education with propaganda. The very fact that they are questioning classical liberalism confirms the free market of ideas. They are really motivated with imposing failed economic theories on others.
(from Drudge Report) Should the Redskins change their name?
I'm more concerned about political correctness run amok and busybodies imposing presentist bias on a team's traditions. Nobody chooses a team name with a negative connotation, say, the Nazi's or Communists.
(from LFC) My only question is the following: if companies were to build roads, wouldn't they need some sort of permit to do such? If they could build anywhere, couldn't they build their property completely surrounding another one in order to prevent that business from being able to build roads? I guess what I am saying is, wouldn't it be disastrous to let companies build wherever they want without at least zoning or permits?
The business model for creating a road is to encourage traffic; unfair pricing would invite arbitrage, make alternative means of transport more feasible and/or require significant compliance costs. The question also assumes that the target of such a scheme would voluntarily relinquish his preexisting right to travel across outlying areas or to access his own property; lawyers often refer to the right to use other's property for limited purposes as an easement or right-of-way.
(from Tom Woods) Is 'limited government' still too much government? We're talking statelessness with the author of The Conscience of an Anarchist today at TomWoodsRadio.com at noon ET. Prepare to be challenged. (And subscribe on iTunes: http://bit.ly/GELp7h)
I think to the extent that we accept the idea of an ideally free market, it is right to question even core functionality like common defense and justice which are not held accountable by competitive alternatives. In practice, I'm a minarchist; as a matter of principle, I'm concerned by a morphing of defense by a vicious cycle of interventionism and a justice system that has all but defined away individual rights, including economic rights, as exceptions to sanctioned State dominance.
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| Via LFC |
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| Via LFC |
(from the Milton Friedman group) "Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government." --Milton Friedman
Yeah, they protect us from low prices, choices from more goods and services, more timely innovations in medicines, ...
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." -- P. J. O'Rourke
What do we call this? "Legislative capture"?
(Via Bastiat Institute) When politicians come together to regulate commerce, what is the result?
A. Protectionist policies
B. Special interests lobby to help set the policy
C. The regulation creates barriers to enter the market and in turn decreases competition
D. Incentive is created to lobby the government
E. All of the above
Trick question. Additional others, like moral hazard, impeding the development of independent standards, industry consolidation, suppression or deferment of innovative goods and services, permanent growth of the government bureaucracy, higher prices as businesses pass along related costs, uncertainty in business decisionmaking--just off the top of my head, not intended to be comprehensive...
(from SIS) War is nothing more than mass murder disguised as self-defense. -DR
So if we are attacked then it is murder to defend ourselves? Can't agree with that. Wars of agression and all the petty crap recently - but WWII? Would you have left Hitler alone until he finished off Europe? Really? Fighting the Nazis was wrong in your opinion?
Hitler only was able to come to power because of US intervention and the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler coming to power showed the heavy cost of people putting their nose where it doesn't belong and trying to be the policeman of the world. -DR
As I recall, Japan attacked us, we declared war on Japan, and Germany had an alliance with Japan and in turn declared war on us. But there's no doubt that FDR was not an isolationist. I do think war is often an unintended consequence of activist foreign policy, and both sides in a war are responsible for morally unacceptable collateral damage to non-combatants and/or their property
Political Humor
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| Courtesy of Statism is Slavery |
What the president should do is put the NSA in charge of the [ObamaCare] website. That way there’s nothing to fill out. They already have all our information. You just put your name in. - Jay Leno
[Silly Jay! They already know your IP address....]
People have been speculating lately about what President Obama will do when he leaves office in 2016. The one thing I think we can safely rule out — website designer. - Jay Leno
[How about financial adviser? Mime? Entrepreneur? Conflict resolutor?]
A new survey found that 25 percent of Americans will spend less on Halloween this year because of the government shutdown's effect on the economy. Which explains that new party game — “Bobbing for Ramen Noodles.” - Jimmy Fallon
[Imagine trick-or-treating at the White House; Michelle confiscates the kids' bags, telling them, "My husband and the US Senate have already left you a $6.5T debt...."]
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Michael Ramirez and Townhall |
Musical Interlude: My Ipod Shuffle Series
Abba, "SOS". I probably won't comment on each song in the series. My first selection, "Conquistador" by Procol Harum, is a marvelous piece, the sweeping arrangement brilliantly played by the Edmonton Orchestra. A minor criticism from someone whom had two years of high school Spanish--I find the mispronunciation of the title annoying: it's pronounced 'Con-KEES-...", not "Con-KWIST-..." A rather brilliantly understated anti-war song; you can just imagine a soldier dying--for what reason exactly--thousands of miles from home and family. I have an unpublished short story on a related theme.
This selection from Abba takes me back to my days as a young Navy officer. In my mind, I saw myself in my dress whites signaling by flag the love of my life in a passing ship. I know--I was a twisted pup...
