No Oil for Pacifists

QOTD

2009-11-22T12:00:00.006-05:00

Democrat John Kerry, finally the senior Senator from Massachusetts, interviewed in the November 18th USA Today:

Q: We've talked about many challenges today, but in the current U.S. political system, do we have the ability to make the difficult, long-term choices that come with costs?

A: It takes leadership to change it. The president is offering leadership. But we're witnessing literally the most obstructionist Congress that I've seen in 26 years here. And the pressure that is put on our colleagues on the other side of the aisle not to work with us is just enormous. None of us has cornered the market on virtue, but we can have an honest debate and have a give-and-take. We don't have to lie about things and come up with phony studies that cloud the scene. But that's the nature of the battle, and we just have to keep plugging away.

Huh? This Congress already passed an economically illiterate stimulus package that paid people not to work, is about to authorize substantially increased government intervention into healthcare and will consider an depression-inducing, un-scientific climate change measure next year. What is John Kerry smoking? Probably whatever it was in 1971.

As Best of the Web's James Taranto responds:

[I]s Congress really "the most obstructionist" it has been during Kerry's tenure? If so, perhaps the answer is to elect more Republicans. The House currently has a 258-177 Democratic majority, which is as many Democrats as it has had at any time during Kerry's congressional tenure except the administration of George H.W. Bush, when the Democratic total reached as high as 267. The Senate Democratic caucus has 60 members, 58 of whom are formally Democrats, making it the most Democratic Senate since Kerry's arrival (the previous high was 57, in 1993-95).

If this Congress is unusually "obstructionist," it is because the president is giving it so much to obstruct. Massachusetts Democrats like Kerry may support a government health-care takeover and massive taxes on energy, but the American people on the whole--including those who elected many of the Democrats in those big majorities--do not. What really frustrates Kerry is not "obstructionism" but democracy.

Or, as MaxedOutMama quips:

I do not care if Obama bows to the Japanese emperor, although it is a gross violation of US tradition, based in our founding national precepts, if he would only start bowing to reality.

Chart of the Day

2009-11-22T00:01:00.009-05:00

I've previously shown that American measures of poverty over-estimate the population of the poor and under-state their material improvement. On his Carpe Diem blog, econ prof Mark Perry spots a 2006 Bureau of Labor Statistics chart clearly illustrating the point:

source: Carpe Diem via BLS at 68

As the BLS report says (pages 66, 69):

The material well-being of families in the United States improved dramatically, as demonstrated by the change over time in the percentage of expenditures allocated for food, clothing, and housing. In 1901, the average U.S. family devoted 79.8 percent of its spending to these necessities, while families in New York City spent 80.3 percent, and families in Boston allocated 86.0 percent. By 2002-03, allocations on necessities had been reduced substantially, for U.S. families to 50.1 percent of spending, for New York City families to 56.7 percent, and for Boston families to 53.8 percent. . .

In 2002-03, the average U.S. family could allocate 49.9 percent ($20,333) of total expenditures for a variety of discretionary consumer goods and services, while the average family in 1901 could allocate only 20.2 percent, or $155, for discretionary spending.

Of course, most of the poor don't stay poor. And today's poor are better off than ever before. Not that the left ever will acknowledge the poverty reduction effect of free market capitalism.

QOTD

2009-11-21T12:00:00.004-05:00

David Harsanyi in the November 11th Denver Post:

If liberals are so disturbed by Congress dictating whether abortion is a legitimate health care issue or not, it only makes sense that they should be equally troubled by government management of other health care decisions.

Undoubtedly, this is zealously naive thinking on my part. Reaching such a conclusion demands a modicum of consistency. And as we've seen, health care "reform" is an ideological crusade immune from logic.

Take the torrent of hypocrisy that spilled from the jilted pro-choice wing of the Democratic Party after a House amendment to the health care reform bill tightened a ban on federal funds for abortions by a vote of 240-194 -- a more substantial mandate against abortion funding, incidentally, than for health-care reform. . .

I have no doubt that the progressive wing of Congress -- folks who generally support a single-payer plan that would eradicate choice and freedom in health care -- believe government failing to give you something is indistinguishable from government taking something away from you.

Yet, while no one will be stripped of their right to have an abortion under this legislation, the vast majority of citizens will have to deal with a cluster of new mandates and more than 100 new government bureaucracies to enforce them.

Citizens will be ordered to buy insurance or face jail time. Americans will answer to a "commissioner of health choices" and pay extra taxes for having the gall to buy top-of-the- line insurance plans. They will no longer have the right to choose health savings accounts or high-deductible plans or, in most cases, flexible spending accounts.

That's just for starters.

Accordingly, . . . all who voted for America's Affordable Health Choices Act (sic) should, for credibility's sake, refrain from evoking "choice" or "freedom," as they voted against those principles this past week.

(via Protein Wisdom)

Leftist Media Bias of the Day

2009-11-21T00:01:00.000-05:00

On November 13th, an Eli Lake Washington Times story accused the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act and various lobbying disclosure laws and rules. Essentially, the article claims NIAC was unlawfully lobbying for Iran. I take no position on whether those charges are true.

This post is about a (controversial) writer for NIAC's blog, Artin Afkhami. Or should I say former writer. He's not listed on NIAC's "staff" page. And, as Michael Rubin notes on The Corner, Afkhami's Linkedin profile now is fairly anodyne. However, the cached version lists Afkhami as:

Research Associate at Princeton University

Iran Analyst at The New York Times

Iran Blogger at NIAC

Question: Why was the New York Times using an analyst from an organization whose admitted goals were "advancing the interests of the Iranian-American community"?

Michael Rubin asked that of the Times, which responded:

Since July, Artin Afkhami has worked for The Times part time, on a freelance basis, providing translations of articles and speeches and monitoring news reports from Iran. He does not write for The Times.

We are reviewing his other affiliations to determine whether any of them pose the possibility or the appearance of a conflict.

Expect reports on the results of this investigation to be delayed until the Times prints at least a half-dozen more articles slamming bias on FOX News.

Conclusion: Western media reports on Middle East issues are particularly slanted because of the press' predilection for employing locals with an anti-American or -Israeli agenda. They rarely disclose the fact--until they're caught. And they often ignore contrary views. So much for leftist media objectivity and ethics.

Healthcare Bill Provision of the Day

2009-11-20T12:00:00.009-05:00

Earlier this week, I critiqued a provision of the House healthcare bill (HR 3962) that would incentivize states away from alternative dispute resolution procedures that cap malpractice liability or lawyer fees. Well there's another gift to trial lawyers buried in the bill.

Specifically, to achieve President Obama's claimed desire to reduce healthcare costs, the bill's government-run plan would fix doctor compensation based on what a committee of bureaucrats believes appropriate to treat a given illness. See Sections 323-24 starting on page 216. Yet, Section 261(a) on page 149 says:

The development, recognition, or implementation of any guideline or other standard under a provision described in [the payment provisions] shall not be construed to establish the standard of care or duty of care owed by health care providers to their patients in any medical malpractice action or claim.

Critical Condition's Joseph Nixon explains that this:

puts physicians in an impossible conundrum. Doctors will only be reimbursed that amount for which the health-care commissioner determines is the appropriate treatment for a particular set of symptoms. However, doctors may still be held legally liable for failing to give that care which they could or should have given if additional care is actually more appropriate for the patient's well being.

So doctors are left with a choice between providing care that they know will benefit the patient but for which they may not be reimbursed, or providing limited care for which they will be reimbursed but quite possibly also sued by the patient.

Advantage -- again -- to the trial lawyers' lobby: the sixth largest campaign contributor over the past two decades. As for doctors: prepare to be assimilated.

QOTD

2009-11-20T00:01:00.000-05:00

Brendan O’Neill on Planet Gore:

If a climate-change sceptic suggests that the Sun, rather than man, is responsible for climatic variations he is denounced as evil, a heretic, someone whose words are so foul and twisted that they will be "partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine and disease in decades ahead." In other words, question the environmentalist consensus, and you are endangering life itself -- your words are literally poisonous.

Yet when a climate-change activist openly calls for calamitous events and the deaths of thousands of people as a way of focusing our leaders’ minds on the problem of climate change, no one bats an eye.

Don't Believe the Health Reform Hype

2009-11-19T12:00:00.002-05:00

One central impetus for healthcare reform is extending insurance to those not now covered. But there's serious disagreement about just how many Americans can't afford health insurance: many of the uninsured have the money but choose to forgo coverage (especially the young and healthy) or opt-out of employer-sponsored health plans; some say they lack insurance though covered by Medicare or Medicaid already; others are illegal immigrants. Perhaps for those reasons, even President Obama dropped his estimate of the uninsured from 47 million to 30 million.

In last month's New York Post, Jeffrey Anderson says that figure still is too high:

The health-care-reform debate is plagued by different numbers on how many Americans lack health insurance, but we actually have excellent data on the question: Ninety percent of Americans are insured, according to the Census -- and even the president more or less concurs.

The Census is the source for the much-cited figure of 46 million uninsured. Yet the very same table plainly indicates that 9 million of those are not US citizens. That leaves 37 million uninsured who are Americans.

But there's more. In the same document, the Census also plainly states that "health-insurance coverage is underreported" in its survey. When it cross-checked its survey results with the official Medicaid rolls, it found that 16.9 percent of those on Medicaid had claimed on their Census forms that they were uninsured. That 16.9 percent amounts to 9 million people.

So the actual tally, according to the most authoritative source we have, is just 28 million uninsured citizens (46 million minus 9 million non-citizens, minus 9 million on Medicaid who were falsely recorded as uninsured).

To be more exact, it leaves 28,157,000 uninsured out of a total of 280,209,000. That leaves us with 90 percent of American citizens covered by insurance, according to the Census.

Remind me why we're seeking to increase inefficient government intervention into a system that works pretty well?

(via Critical Condition)

Chart of the Day

2009-11-19T00:01:00.011-05:00

UPDATE: below

A new study by Georgia Tech Professor Brian Stone in the Environmental Science & Technology journal concludes that "Mitigating climate change could be better achieved by regulating land use change than emissions reductions alone":

source: Stone, Land Use as Climate Change Mitigation

caption (first sentence only): Urban and rural temperature anomalies (5 year means) for 50 large U.S. metropolitan regions over the period of 1957-2006.

The study's press release quotes the author:

"Across the U.S. as a whole, approximately 50 percent of the warming that has occurred since 1950 is due to land use changes (usually in the form of clearing forest for crops or cities) rather than to the emission of greenhouse gases," said Stone. "Most large U.S. cities, including Atlanta, are warming at more than twice the rate of the planet as a whole -- a rate that is mostly attributable to land use change. As a result, emissions reduction programs -- like the cap and trade program under consideration by the U.S. Congress -- may not sufficiently slow climate change in large cities where most people live and where land use change is the dominant driver of warming."

No kidding--this is old news:

source: NASA's Land-Cover and Land-Use Change Program

Except to Congressmen Waxman and Markey.

MORE:

Warming skeptic Princeton physics prof Freeman Dyson agrees at about 3:35 into this video.

(via Watts Up With That?, reader Marc D.)

QOTD

2009-11-18T12:00:00.003-05:00

Victor Davis Hanson on The Corner:

George W. Bush inherited a recession. He also inherited the Iraq no-fly zones, a Middle East boiling after the failed last-minute Clintonian rush for an imposed peace, an intelligence community wedded to the notion of Saddam's WMD proliferation, a Congress on record supporting "regime change" in Iraq, a WMD program in Libya, a Syrian occupation of Lebanon, Osama bin Laden enjoying free rein in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, a renegade Pakistan that had gone nuclear on Clinton's watch with Dr. Khan in full export mode, and a pattern of appeasing radical Islam after its serial attacks (on the World Trade Center, the Khobar Towers, U.S. embassies, and the U.S.S. Cole).

In other words, Bush inherited the regular "stuff" that confronts most presidents when they take office. What is strange is that Obama has established a narrative that he, supposedly unlike any other president, inherited a mess.

At some point, Team Obama might have at least acknowledged that, by January 2009, Iraq was largely quiet; Libya was free of WMD; Syria was out of Lebanon; most of the al-Qaeda leadership had been attrited or was in hiding; a homeland-security protocol was in place to deal with domestic terror plots; European governments were mostly friendly to the U.S. (unlike during the Chirac-Schröder years); and the U.S. enjoyed good relations with one-third of the planet in China and India.

The fact that in the Bush years we were increasingly disliked by Ahmadinejad, Assad, Castro, Chávez, Kim Jong Il, Morales, Ortega, and Putin, may in retrospect seem logical, just as their current warming to the U.S. may prove to be cause for alarm, given the repugnant nature of these strongmen.

Agreed.

Don't Believe the Stimulus Job Creation Hype

2009-11-18T00:01:00.006-05:00

Remember how the Obama Administration first announced that the $787 billion stimulus package had saved or created a whopping 30 thousand jobs? Embarrassed by the absurdly low figures -- which the Associated Press said were overstated -- the Federal bean counters quickly upped the official number to 640 thousand jobs. According to Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to Vice President Biden, that meant the cost per job saved/created was an amazing $92,000! (Amusingly, CNN published a chart implying that jobs were created by money not yet spent.)

My first reaction was to chortle over the fact that the cost per job is twice the mean annual personal income--it would have been cheaper just to give the money away. Or that the figures fail to account for jobs foregone when government spending crowded-out private sector wealth creation.

But before shuffling off to the spreadsheets, I realized that the Administration's math still is wrong. According to the AP:

Despite White House promises that errors would be corrected, the latest stimulus job count still includes mistakes such as the ones discovered in the AP's earlier sampling of contracts. For example, the Palm Beach County, Fla., water department reported 57 meter readers, customer service representatives and other positions as part of two water projects. That got incorrectly doubled to 114. Some agencies that received stimulus money continue to report saving jobs, despite using the money for employee pay raises. And the new data appeared to include at least dozens of entries in which contractors listed the same number of jobs as created or saved on different projects, which suggested double- or triple-counting of the same workers used on all projects.

The AP follow-up a few days later was even more dismissive:

An Associated Press review of the latest stimulus reports -- which the White House promised would undergo extensive reviews to ensure accuracy -- found that more than two-thirds of 14,506 jobs credited to the recovery act under spending by just one federal office were overstated because they counted pay increases for existing workers as jobs saved.

The inflated job count is at least partly the product of the administration instructing local community agencies that received money to count the raises as jobs saved.

"That's more than ridiculous," said Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner.

Most of the inflated figures were like those cited in the 935 saved jobs reported by the Southwest Georgia Community Action in Moultrie, Ga. The agency, like hundreds of others collecting Head Start money, claimed all its existing employees' jobs were saved because they received a pay raise with the stimulus cash.

Similar claims led to overstating by more than 9,300 the number of jobs saved with more than $323 million in stimulus money distributed by the Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families, the AP's review found.

More than 250 other community agencies in the U.S. similarly reported saving jobs when using the money to give pay raises, pay for training and continuing education, extend employee work hours or buy equipment, according to their spending reports.

The Georgia program inflated the numbers even further by claiming the recovery money saved more jobs than the number of people it actually employs. The agency employs 508 people but claimed 935 jobs were saved because of confusion over government reports.

Tallying the various press investigations into the 640,000 jobs figure, the Washington Examiner concluded, "[m]ore than ten percent of the jobs the Obama administration has claimed were 'created or saved' by the $787 billion stimulus package are doubtful or imaginary." Surf over to the Examiner's interactive map of bogus jobs, many with hyperlinked sources. One example is Fayettville, Arkansas where, according to the New York Times, a $1,000 grant to purchase a single lawn mower improbably was credited with saving 50 jobs. Or try North Chicago, Illinois, where $4.7 million was given to local schools supposedly saving the jobs of 473 teachers--except that the Chicago Tribune says the school district employs only 290 teachers. They also showed job growth in non-existent Congressional districts.

No wonder Congressional Democrats want to pass a second jobs bill. And they want similar bureaucrats to run healthcare.

(via Washington Examiner, The Problem With Kevin, Don McKee)

QOTD

2009-11-17T12:00:00.004-05:00

From a November 11th AP story:

Statistically, CNN's audience is far from nonpartisan.

Of people who say their main source of news is CNN, 46 percent identify themselves as Democrats and 13 percent as Republicans, according to a July survey by the Pew Research Center (the rest say they're independent or don't identify themselves politically). The same study found that Fox's main source audience was 38 percent Republican and 18 percent Democratic.

I think Lou Dobbs recently discovered the consequences of the slant in CNN's audience.

(via Don Surber)

NEA--The Cover-Up

2009-11-17T00:01:00.019-05:00

Several posts starting in August detailed the Obama Administration's attempt to hijack the National Endowment for the Arts for political purposes. In what I thought the final chapter, the NEA admitted error and fired its communications director, Yosi Sergant--but NEA's chairman claimed Sergant had acted without authority or approval. In other words, they fingered Sergant as a rogue staffer. Even if accurate, that didn't explain the role of White House staffers participating in the process.

Never mind--it's not true anyway. The conservative foundation Judicial Watch used the Freedom of Information Act to get NEA emails, including some between Sergant and White House and The Corporation for National and Community Service staffers. These documents make clear that the notion of soliciting artists to proselytize the President's position's wasn't Sergant's but originated with an unnamed Obama campaign activist. Thereafter, there were numerous emails between Sergant and an employee of the federal program United We Serve where the latter appears to be organizing the campaign. Some of those emails were copied to a second NEA employee, Elizabeth Stark. And, following that, Sergant himself sent a conference call invitation saying:

A call has come in to our generation. A call from the top. A call from a house that is White. A call that we must answer. And to answer it, we need you. . .

United We Serve is President Obama's call to service challenging all Americans to engage in sustained, meaningful community service. With the knowledge that ordinary people can achieve extraordinary things when given the proper tools, President Obama is asking us to come together to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda -- health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal.

Now is the time for us to answer this call. It is time for us as a group of artists, promoters, organizers, influencers, marketers, tastemakers, leaders or just plain, cool people to join together and work together to promote a more civically engaged America and celebrate how the arts can be used for a positive change!

In sum, the documents demonstrate that the idea originated not with Sergant but with an outside Obama partisan; that White House and other Federal employees were intimately involved; that others in the NEA knew of the plan; and that Sergant himself said the idea came from the White House. This is no more a rouge staffer than the Cuban burglars were the brains behind the Watergate break-in.

Conclusion: Yosi Sergant was the fall-guy for an extensive effort to twist tax-supported arts funding to advance Obama's political agenda. All Federal employees named in the documents should be the subject of an immediate investigation, whose outcome should be disclosed publicly. After all, didn't the President promise:

an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Or, like NEA's last fable, is that statement also "inoperative"?

QOTD

2009-11-16T12:00:00.007-05:00

Jed Graham in Investor's Business Daily:

From 2008 to 2019, federal revenues are projected to grow by $1.45 trillion, but extra interest payments on the public debt of $550 billion will soak up nearly 40% of those extra tax dollars.

Here is another: Consider that in 2008, Washington spent about half as much on interest payments ($253 billion) as it did on the nondefense programs that it budgets on an annual basis ($508 billion).

Those nondefense outlays cover homeland security, education, job training, housing assistance, veterans’ health, science, workplace safety, transportation, the environment and foreign aid.

But by 2019, interest costs would reach $800 billion under the Obama budget compared with $720 billion in spending on nondefense discretionary programs.

Agreed--be very afraid. Unless you take comfort from the fact that President Obama plans to focus on deficit reduction in his State of the Union address two months from now.

(via Ed Morrissey)

Healthcare Bill Provision of the Day

2009-11-16T00:01:00.015-05:00

UPDATE: on Federalism, below

On November 7th, the House passed HR 3962, the healthcare "reform" bill. At 1990 pages -- half again as big as it was last summer -- it's longer than War and Peace. So stray sections screwing the ordinary Natasha and Pierre are easy to hide.

One such is Section 2531 beginning on page 1431. It provides "incentive payments" to states that enact qualifying "alternative medical liability law[s]" that would parallel the current system. Sounds vaguely like tort reform, doesn't it?

Uh, no. Subsection (a)(4) (page 1432) reads:

The contents of an alternative liability law are in accordance with this paragraph if--

(A) the litigation alternatives contained in the law consist of certificate of merit, early offer, or both; and
(B) the law does not limit attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages.

So future state alternative malpractice resolution efforts could take on the trial lawyers only by forgoing Federal funding.

Contrary to some conservative claims, the proposed legislation wouldn't alter existing state malpractice reform laws, such as Texas's damage caps, which have drawn doctors to that state. But, as the November 12th Wall Street Journal editorialized:

The House bill is intended to discourage other states from doing the same. . . The Pelosi bill also provides these incentives only if states adopt watered-down alternatives to existing malpractice caps. Those alternatives include certificate-of-merit rules, which in theory require lawyers to get medical proof before suing but in practice mean that lawyers recruit and finance "expert" witnesses.

Progressive lefties and plaintiffs' lawyers are an odd couple. But each is committed to preserving out-of-control medical malpractice liability. And together they own the Democrat party.

On some level, there's little new here. Malpractice limits always were a long shot in this Administration. Still, if adopted, HR 3962 bribes the states to block further tort reform. So, more broadly, the bill is another example of the European-like centralization current lefties favor (except in banking). As the WSJ concludes:

The hidden Pelosi tort bomb is one more example of the stealth radicalism that defines ObamaCare. If it passes in anything like its current form, we are going to be cleaning up the mess for decades to come.

In healthcare and the rest of our economy.

MORE:

Gene Healy in the November 17th Washington Examiner:

Not yet a year into his administration, Obama's record on 10th Amendment issues is already clear: He'll let the states have their way when their policies please blue team sensibilities and he'll call in the feds when they don't. Thus, he'll grant California a waiver to allow it to raise auto emissions standards, but he'll bring the hammer down when the state tries to cut payments to unionized health care workers.

That's not how it's supposed to work.

Bumper Sticker of the Day

2009-11-15T12:00:00.003-05:00

(via Doug Ross)

Chart of the Day

2009-11-15T00:01:00.005-05:00

From the October 28th Wall Street Journal:

source: WSJ

The Journal explains:

[T]he 2010 House budget bills would permanently raise annual outlays for discretionary programs by about $75 billion a year from now until, well, forever.

These spending hikes do not include the so-called mandatory spending programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which exploded by 9.8% and 24.7%, respectively, in the just-ended 2009 fiscal year. All of this largesse is also on top of the stimulus funding that agencies received in 2009. The budget for the Environmental Protection Agency rose 126%, the Department of Education budget 209% and energy programs 146%.

House Republicans on the Budget Committee added up the 2009 appropriations, the stimulus funding and 2010 budgets and found that federal agencies will, on average, receive a 57% increase in appropriated funds from 2008-2010. By contrast, real family incomes fell by 3.6% last year. There's no recession in Washington.

More broadly, the White House and the 111th Congress have already enacted or proposed $3.4 trillion of new spending through 2019 for things like the health-care plan, cap and tax, and the children's health bill passed earlier this year. Very little of this has been financed with offsetting spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.

(via WILLisms)

We're Doomed--A Continuing Series

2009-11-14T12:00:00.002-05:00

According to the November 8th New York Times:

[I]t costs the United Nations an average of $2,473 per page to create every single document in its six official languages, while outside contractors complete the same work for around $450.

(via Volokh Conspiracy)

QOTD

2009-11-14T00:01:00.006-05:00

Representative Martin Heinrich (D. N.M.), who supported the House healthcare bill, explaining his reasoning in the New York Times healthcare blog:

"This is an opportunity to do something as big as Social Security," he added. "And me, personally, I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history."

Because we know how well Social Security is doing.

(via Maggie's Farm)

U.S. Government Statistics of the Day

2009-11-13T12:00:00.004-05:00

Three items from NOAA's October 2009 "State of the Climate" report:

The average October temperature of 50.8°F was 4.0°F below the 20th Century average and ranked as the 3rd coolest based on preliminary data.

For the nation as a whole, it was the third coolest October on record. The month was marked by an active weather pattern that reinforced unseasonably cold air behind a series of cold fronts. Temperatures were below normal in eight of the nation's nine climate regions, and of the nine, five were much below normal. Only the Southeast climate region had near normal temperatures for October.

For the year-to-date (January - October) period, the contiguous U.S. temperature ranked 43rd warmest.

Just don't tell the Associated Press's Seth Borestein.

(via Don Surber, who asks "How did the computer model miss this?")

Leftist Media Bias of the Day

2009-11-13T00:01:00.000-05:00

Last Thursday, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann held a healthcare-protest town hall on the Capitol's west lawn Here's how a New York Times blog post covered the event:

Jerry Hershberger, a market representative for an automotive company from Flower Mound, Tex., said he flew up just to protest the health care bill. "A little expense now compared to a lot of expense later," he said, explaining why the cost of the trip was worth it to him.

Mr. Hershberger, like many of the demonstrators, repeated some of the most common conservative and Republican talking points heard repeatedly on Fox News. "It’s not bipartisan," he said, standing outside the Capitol wearing a Texas Longhorns baseball cap. . .

Many of the demonstrators, like Judith Garloch of Newark, Ohio, said they were opposed to an increasing government role in the health care. . .

Ms. Garloch, who has a combination of Medicare and private coverage, said insurance should be sold across state lines to increase competition.

But Ms. Garloch, like many in the crowd who while visibly angry, could not articulate the main problems in the health care system or how they should be solved.

Which is it--aping FOX or lacking logic? Both--because the Times labels rather than reports. Either way, conservatives are stupid. That's all the news the Times ever prints.

(via TimesWatch)

Unintended Consequence of the Day

2009-11-12T12:00:00.005-05:00

Martin Feldstein in the November 6th Washington Post:

Obamacare could have the unintended consequence of raising health insurance premiums and causing a decline in the number of people with insurance.

Here's why: A key feature of the House and Senate health bills would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to anyone with preexisting conditions. The new coverage would start immediately, and the premium could not reflect the individual's health condition.

This well-intentioned feature would provide a strong incentive for someone who is healthy to drop his or her health insurance, saving the substantial premium costs. After all, if serious illness hit this person or a family member, he could immediately obtain coverage. As healthy individuals decline coverage in this way, insurance companies would come to have a sicker population. The higher cost of insuring that group would force insurers to raise their premiums. (Separate accident policies might develop to deal with the risk of high-cost care after accidents when there is insufficient time to buy insurance.)

The higher premium level would cause others who are currently insured to drop coverage, pushing premiums even higher. The result would be a spiral of rising premiums and shrinking numbers of insured.

In an attempt to prevent this, the draft legislation provides penalties for individuals who choose not to buy insurance and for employers that do not offer health insurance. But the levels of these fines are generally too low to cause a rational individual to insure. . .

To simplify, let's look at a family in which one adult earns $50,000 and receives the family plan that costs $13,375. Employees typically pay about 25 percent of the premium cost, or $3,340. The $10,035 remaining cost is deductible by the employer and not taxable to the employee. So the total net cost to the employer of this employee's compensation (taking into account the payroll tax and the corporate tax deduction) is $41,509. The employee would receive the $50,000 minus his part of the health insurance premium, or $46,660 as pretax income.

If that employer stopped providing insurance, he could be subject to a fine of 8 percent of payroll, or about $4,000 for this individual. But even with this fine, he could pay a cash wage to the individual of $53,605 and still have the same net cost of $41,509 (because the cash wage would be subject to the 7.65 percent payroll tax and the combined amount would be deductible at the 35 percent corporate tax rate.) The employee's pay would therefore rise from $46,660 to $53,605, an increase of $6,945. That would be subject to income and payroll taxes, leaving a net increase of $4,677. Even after paying the 2.5 percent personal fine on his cash income of $53,605, he would have additional net income of $3,337, a substantial rise for someone who started with pretax income of $46,660.

In short, for those who are now privately insured through employers or by direct purchase, there would be substantial incentives to become uninsured until they become sick. The resulting rise in the cost to insurance companies as the insured population becomes sicker would raise the average premium, strengthening that incentive.

Unintended, yes, but entirely predictable. In fact, it's what happened in New Jersey (page 16), home of the second-highest average health insurance premiums.

See also Greg Mankiw in the November 1st New York Times.

(via Carpe Diem)

Headline of the Day

2009-11-12T00:01:00.004-05:00

Also from the November 6th Times (London):

All hope is lost for Copenhagen climate treaty, British officials say

Newspaper Article of the Day

2009-11-11T12:00:00.009-05:00

From the November 6th Times (London):

Experts say that fears surrounding climate change are overblown

Alarming predictions that climate change will lead to the extinction of hundreds of species may be exaggerated, according to Oxford scientists.

They say that many biodiversity forecasts have not taken into account the complexities of the landscape and frequently underestimate the ability of plants and animals to adapt to changes in their environment.

"The evidence of climate change-driven extinctions have really been overplayed," said Professor Kathy Willis, a long-term ecologist at the University of Oxford and lead author of the article.

Professor Willis warned that alarmist reports were leading to ill-founded biodiversity policies in government and some major conservation groups. She said that climate change has become a "buzz word" that is taking priority while, in practice, changes in human use of land have a greater impact on the survival of species. "I’m certainly not a climate change denier, far from it, but we have to have sound policies for managing our ecosystems," she said.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature backed the article, saying that climate change is "far from the number-one threat" to the survival of most species. "There are so many other immediate threats that, by the time climate change really kicks in, many species will not exist any more," said Jean Christophe Vie, deputy head of the IUCN species program, which is responsible for compiling the international Redlist of endangered species.

Agreed.

(via Watts Up With That?)

Waxman-Markey Provision of the Day

2009-11-11T00:01:00.021-05:00

UPDATE: below

The House passed the Waxman-Markey climate change bill (HR 2454); the Democrats' proposal now is pending in the Senate. Section 705(e)(2) of the draft (page 692) directs the EPA to attempt to avoid "atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations above 450 parts per million carbon dioxide equivalent." This prescription is clothed in terms of "the latest scientific information." Similar numbers have been mentioned in discussions on the mooted Copenhagen climate treaty--though Dr. Hansen and other radicals argue for an even lower concentration of 350 ppm carbon equivalents.

Of course, U.S. carbon emissions have declined of late, though global emissions are up. That's because "non-Kyoto countries" (mostly the developing world) produce the majority of atmospheric carbon. China and India, for two, will not except any binding emission limits--and they account for 26 percent of emissions. (Any new Copenhagen agreement may not even be legally binding.) So U.S. cuts likely won't accomplish much--even if man-generated carbon is at fault. But never mind that science.

Further, the draft legislation's metric is bogus, as Luboš Motl explains:

The very basic features of the notion of the "carbon dioxide equivalent" are pseudoscientific in character because the linear formula that is implicitly assumed contradicts basic physical properties of the gases -- overlapping spectral lines as well as the nonlinear dependence of the greenhouse effect for each individual gas.

For that reason, even the EPA says that employing carbon dioxide equivalents "is declining." But, this Frankenstein may soon become law, so never mind that science as well.

Assuming "450 parts per million carbon dioxide equivalent" remains the trigger, where are we now? The current CO₂ concentration is 386 ppm. And "the current value of the combined concentration is around 448 ppm and it could reach 450 ppm in 2010." So, were the legislation passed, we'd start off over the limit.

Why is this important? Because of Section 707 of the draft legislation (page 698), the first part of which reads:

Not later than July 1, 2015, and every 4 years thereafter--
(1) the President shall direct relevant Federal agencies to use existing statutory authority to take appropriate actions identified in the reports submitted under sections 705 and 706 and to address any shortfalls identified in such reports.

Such a statutory directive represents an unprecedented delegation of power to a future President. As Christopher Horner says on Big Government:

The provision is quite clearly installed for green pressure groups to sue to force the chief executives’ hands to seize all manner of power otherwise unavailable to him under our system but desired by the greens and whatever they can convince the federal court’s 9th Circuit is in our interests. That is, the bill actually does mandate that a "climate emergency" be declared by the federal government when global greenhouse gas concentrations - which are not something which the bill or the United States can control and over which we have a decreasing influence each day - reach 450 parts per million. Which the bill’s authors knew would already be the case by the time the bill was adopted. . .

[T]his agenda transparently is not about GHG concentrations, or the climate.

It’s about what this provision would bring: almost limitless power over private economic activity and individual liberty for the activist president and, for the reluctant leader, litigious greens.

The Washington Examiner's Mark Tapscott wonders:

Would the president be empowered to do things like nationalize whole sectors of industry, ban coal use, restrict private automobile use, or anything else the "emergency" requires?

Well, yes, that's the point. Waxman-Markey is less about climate change than radical environmentalists experimenting with the economy so they can tax Western Civ.--to the detriment of ordinary Americans. No wonder Fidel Castro favors the bill.

Conclusion: Talk of a climate tipping point seems to inspire all sorts of totalitarians. So I agree with Luboš Motl:

It's extremely bad to design laws and treaties resembling the global warming communism. But it's even worse to give people additional powers "activated" as soon as some ill-defined, scientifically meaningless quantities exceed some arbitrary thresholds. It's hard to believe that a responsible politician could ever support such a bill. . .

Isn't it cleaner to clarify the situation by saying that the police state begins in January 2011, rather than to encode this plan into convoluted verbal constructions using ad hoc definitions that are detached from the scientific content? . . .

Everyone who is supporting legislation of this kind is an irresponsible lunatic.

For those of you keeping score at home, there's 219 of them in the House of Representatives.

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Planet Gore's Chris Horner:

It says use all existing authority -- the Clean Water Act, NEPA, Endangered Species Act, and any federal law requiring a permit for any economic activity that does or could lead to GHG production -- in a way that is not at all clear is consistent with the legislative intent, design, or otherwise feasible use (before this bill). This asserts on Congress’s behalf that these laws are now legislatively intended to serve as GHG-suppression regimes -- after establishing in an earlier provision causation by and harm from each and every existing or new increment of economic activity that uses or produces resources.

That’s new. That’s big. Both on its face and taken in context. All laws intended for purposes A, B, and C are now also expressly intended to be used -- mandated -- to chase an elusive global GHG concentration downward by emission avoidance. This is not the IRS getting Capone on tax evasion because the Feds couldn’t nail him for his racketeering, murder, etc. Tax evasion laws were intended to be used against tax evaders no matter what else those people did, and were employed for the purpose of prosecuting tax evasion. Not every law on the books was intended to keep CO2 from being emitted. Now, everything in an enormous suite of laws intended to manage interstate commerce in the name of ensuring free-flow of goods, services, and other economic activity is turned into an environmental law seeking the rationing of permitted interstate commerce in the name of the atmosphere.

(via reader OBH via Melissa Clouthier, Heritage Foundation)

Nonsense of the Day

2009-11-10T12:00:00.006-05:00

UPDATE: below

In a recent water-cooler debate about the Middle East, a leftist claimed (among other things) that President Bush invaded Iraq under instructions from god. Prodded for a source, she produced a link to this two-year old post on Candide's Notebook blog.

The page purports to list quotes about god from President Bush. All but the first are unsourced (or, at best, sourced to another unsourced site). This is a waste of hyperlink technology, and seriously diminishes the authority and usefulness of the post. And, in any event, these quotes--if accurate--mostly have the President saying that freedom is every man's God given right. I'm not sure why that would be objectionable, even to atheists.

The first quote, however, is different. It is hyperlinked to a 2005 Guardian (U.K.) story, and reads:

I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East'. And, by God, I'm gonna do it.

If true, this would support my opponent's claim. A few minutes of research revealed that it's bogus--Bush never said it.

The language comes from Nabil Shaath, Palestinian foreign minister at the time of a 2003 Israeli-Palestinian summit -- which Bush attended -- at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. No other delegate heard it, and Shaath didn't report it until two years after the summit, which itself is suspicious.

More importantly, President Bush's spokesman denied saying it. Shaath's then-boss, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, called the supposed quote "completely false." And Shaath himself backed down, saying he "did not believe Mr Bush thought God had given him a personal message."

I've informed my opponent, and urged the host of that blog to delete the first paragraph. Both forget Layne's law: the Internet means "we can fact-check your ass."

As a reminder, President Bush and his Administration repeatedly cited three reasons for toppling Saddam, one of which was (PM Tony Blair said it too) to free the Iraqi people. One may disagree with Bush's rationale. But don't distort it.

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The blog owner declined to correct his error, calling me a "clown."