Whispers from the Government Drawing Room

Spending on national defense, adjusted for inflation and population, was 42% higher in 2008 than in 1965. Spending for routinely accepted government activity (parks, NASA, embassies, courts, prisons and the like) were 76% higher. Both, in other words, grew far less rapidly than the economy or federal revenues — both of which were about 150% higher in 2008 than in 1965. But welfare-state expenditures were 583% higher. In fact, the welfare state became the core of the federal government, growing from 26% of federal outlays in 1965 to 61% in 2008. When the House Ways and Means Committee drafted Medicare in 1965, it predicted that the hospital-insurance part of the program would cost $9 billion by 1990. The actual figure was $67 billion. In 1987, Congress anticipated that a federal program to assist hospitals serving large numbers of Medicaid patients would require $1 billion by 1992. The final figure: $17 billion. (From IBD)

There are many topics in our "national conversation" that are expressed primarily in body language and innuendo, never in sentences or paragraphs. It is reminiscent of parents talking in front of their children about sex. There are apparently some political facts of life we are simply not mature enough to know. Here is one: The growth of the welfare state will soon outstrip the ability of working people to support it. The transfer of money from productive people to nonproductive people can not be maintained much longer. The recent crisis in the economy was caused by cheap money, terrible business and governmental decisions, irresponsibility and fraud but the crisis itself was unrelated to the basic underlying problem of the welfare state expansion; the artificial expansion of the economy actually may have artificially delayed the crisis. The immediate solution is to take more money from working people and give less money to welfare programs. Then more and less. And more and less. Until...until what?

Health Careless--Opps!

The U.S. spends on health care the equivalent of 300% of India's gross domestic product although India has three times the population. So the Americans on health care spend three times the dollars the Indians spend on everything--food, housing, military, health care--everything. Last year the American venture capitalists invested 410 million dollars on health care information technology compared with 30 billion dollars in social media and other technology.

One third of American health dollars go to the 5% of the population that dies every year, usually after an intense 2-3 month illness. Another 30% goes to the 5% with chronic illnesses. 90% of rest of the population (the healthy ones) consumes the last third.

Now there may be some wonderful medical breakthroughs coming, there may be some frauds uncovered, the government may introduce new efficiencies (although they have never done so before) but it is clear that some hard decisions will have to be made. After all the promises made, one might even say cruel.

Oscars, Entertainment, and Sharing Streep's Wealth

One of the enduring mysteries of life is why the annual award event for the entertainment industry can not be entertaining. True, it is difficult to watch wealthy, self-important entertainers masquerading as socially conscious artists fawning over and congratulating each-other but certainly there must be enough entertainment talent available to make it bearable. But once again, such was not the case. Aside from a very funny girl named Emma Stone, a genuinely nice moment with Christopher Plummer and Crazy Angie's unselfconscious vamping, it was pretty much a night of awkward facelifts, pomposity and forced humor.

And then there is the problem of Meryl Streep. Once again she won the Best Actress award. The problem is not that she won, the problem is that it is not fair. She is the Babe Ruth of actresses and should have won every time she was nominated (17). The only thing preventing her from winning every time is a misplaced spreading the wealth ("Let someone else get it. She can't get it every time") and prejudice: There is a lingering suspicion that she is somehow not an actress, that she is a perfect mimic--like Frank Gorsham--and mimicry is in some minds is different from acting. So she is not acting like Margaret Thatcher, she is mimicking what Thacher is like--as if this is in some way not acting. Nonetheless she should be in her own category, the award should go annually to the next best actress with an asterisk.

More, it would help this event. The destruction of the star system has created precious little to identify from year to year. Will Mara ever be back? Or the girl who played Monroe? How many chances will these people get? And as technology is beginning to be more and more important, the age, and the isolation, of the performers is beginning to show.

Sunday Sermon 2/26/12

"Calque" is an English word borrowed from the French where it means "to trace" or "to copy." The word "gospel" is such a word. It is a literal translation of a phrase in Greek meaning "good news" or "good tidings" into Old English "god-spell" ("good"--not "God"-- and "word"), which became "gospel." While it refers to the collections of the four evangelists' writings, specifically it means the redemption of man's sins through Christ's sacrifice. It first appears in the New Testament in Corinthians, presumably written before the earliest gospel, Mark, where it appears for the first time among the evangelists, in today's gospel.

It is a rather striking writing, describing Christ's forty days and forty nights in the desert with remarkable simplicity and precision. Compared to the other versions (which, according to theory, followed) it is positively laconic. And scary.

The description follows Christ's baptism by John the Baptist where The Spirit descends over Him and a voice from heaven says, "Thou art my beloved Son." The Spirit then drives Christ into the desert where He is tempted by Satan, He is "with the beasts" and "angels ministered to Him." When John is captured, Christ returns "preaching the gospel"; and again "repent and believe the gospel."

Immediately, immediately, after a heavenly voice confirms Christ as the Son of God He is driven by the Holy Spirit to the desert and is tempted. Christ is tempted! Then He lives with beasts and angels. The scene is staggering and horrifying, but so simple and accepting in its presentation. Mark, a contemporary of Christ, writes this astonishing beginning of Christ's public life with the eye of a man convinced by Christ's later life.

The scene is expanded by Matthew and Luke into a drama, a debate between good and evil, but this version is so much better, chilling, stark and believing. And in the end, Christ returns from His confinement and, with John on the block and with Golgotha looming, announces He has/is "good news."

Cab Thoughts 2/25/12

"Safe House" is, square inch per square inch, the most relentlessly violent strip of celluloid I have ever seen.

The primary continues. I wonder if we can surrender. Wait..maybe that's their plan.

There has been a reissue of Ellis Peters. Her mysteries are well plotted, with likable characters and of historical interest. In one, a complex murder is resolved in a savage day long trial by combat and justice is viciously victorious, in another a brutal patricide is symbolically forgiven and allowed to escape the law. In summary, she's very good and worth the effort.

It is possible that concussions in football will become so much a problem that the game will erode. Most players have been willing to accept the orthopedic risks but the neurological risks are different. And there is a different , additional element: The injuries are uncertain and difficult to explain. More, there is the subtle hint that management knew the significance was greater than admitted. If colussion is suspected the league will suffer terribly.

Malkin is playing better than anyone else in the league. The question is, what is necessary for him to do this?

Plane thoughts:
In this world of equality and fairness, why is there first class seating on airplanes and why can't I use their bathroom
------and is that why are stewardesses suddenly so old?

At breakfast at an airport over 60% of the customers were drinking alcohol before 10 o'clock.

A lot of "purse dogs" on the airplane. Very much like the scenes in Florida where elderly women push dogs in prams. "Children of Men."

Social Forests and Trees

The illegitimacy rate among women with college educations, while it has tripled since 1960, is still only about 8 percent. (The national rate around 1890 was 6%.) 92% of children whose families make over $75,000 per year are living with both parents. On the other end of the income scale, the situation is the obverse. Only about 20 percent of children in families earning under $15,000 live with both parents. There are clearly some statistical irregularities here; one parent presumably makes half of two and the children likely live with the mother who statistically earns less, divorce and separation. But it is interesting that something so obvious to at least superficial evaluation gets so little discussion. Getting a high school degree, not getting pregnant in your teens, delaying marriage are all profound factors, superficially, in success or failure in the culture.

There are problems, of course. Not finishing high school, early pregnancies and the like may be an expression of a problem, not the problem. This population may be stupid, monumentally careless, defiantly self-indulgent or some combination thereof so that treating the fever of the uneducated pregnancy may shortsightedly miss the disease. But these events, so predictive of social and economic failure in both the parents and their children, are pretty striking. And they do not seem to be related to outsourcing, the tax rate of Buffet's secretary or the caloric count of the Big Mac.

Our government has a lot of opinions. It is curious that our leaders offer so few opinions and such little guidance about something so basic.

Money Laundering

The $335 million lending-bias deal over presumed prejudicial mortgage decisions requires Bank of America to fork over part of the settlement to left leaning political groups not at all connected to the suit. This remarkable decision redistributes millions in settlement cash to third parties instead of alleged victims. The American Department of Justice wanted this as part of the decision. This is a fascinating way of moving money from one group of people to people completely uninvolved with the suit or its decision.

But in 2008 it was even worse; it was voluntary. In 2008, Bank of America donated $2 million to Acorn Housing Corp. of Chicago. It also gave $500,000 to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition of Washington and $300,000 to the National Urban League of New York. The Bank of America gave millions to their sworn enemies.

I'm a good citizen. No one called me with an offer.

Philosophy Laundering

Back in 2008, Obama was asked if he would still support raising the capital-gains tax rate (the intended effect of the Buffett Rule) if this increase would decrease government revenue. Obama said yes. The decline in tax revenue was subservient to some other priority, presumably the elusive "fairness" unicorn. When asked about the implication of his plan to decrease coal-fire plants he replied "Electric costs would necessarily skyrocket." The cost to the average citizen and the negative impact on the economy were subservient to "something else." His recent decision to force all organizations to participate in contraception and abortion is another effort to force an ideological square peg in the societal round hole; there is a greater point at stake, perhaps even unrelated to the disputed law.

There are interesting parallels here. The Roman Catholic position on birth control is of uncertain thinking and carries some practical problems for real people. It creates a powerful and unnecessary conflict in well-meaning minds with some significant risks and consequences if these concepts are followed to their inevitable conclusions. Obama thinks in a similar vein. The principle followed is worth the damage done. What we are seeing here is destruction for some greater, poorly explained, good. (Curiously this "destruction" is the same negative force these people so decry in the competitive workplace.) Obama's medical and economic policy is the ultimate. Dangerous, unproven and byzantine programs with huge and ominous downsides are relentlessly pursued in the context of some overreaching and inarticulate good. That in an individual can be quirky, even fanatical. In a national leader it is a lot worse.

Sunday Sermon 2/19/12

In this week's gospel, Christ goes to Capernaum and stays at a home there. He is soon besieged by an intense crowd, a crowd not yet Christian enough to allow a paralysed man, carried by four men in a litter, access to Christ. The four men lift the paralytic onto the roof, cut a hole in the roof and lower the man into the room where Christ is teaching. The effort impresses Christ and he forgives him his sins.

The scribes in attendance are horrified; only God can forgive sins and this sounds lie blasphemy. But not just the scribes were shocked. One can only wonder what the paralytic and his laboring, roof-breaking bra zeros thought. We did all this so he could be just forgiven?

Then Christ delivers the zinger: What is easier, to cure a paralysed man or forgive sins? Who is he talking to? The fretting scribes? The roof-breaking friends and their burden? The amorphous crowd?

Then Christ cures him, almost as an afterthought, as if He were distracted from our world for the moment. Forgiveness stands long before physical health in Christ's mental hierarchy. Indeed, forgiveness is the practical point and the physical almost an abstraction.

The cured man walks out through the crowd. They are in wonderment. Never have they ever seen anything like this, they say. One might wonder just what "this" they mean.

Years ago Aristotle said that he could cut anything in half if he had the right tools. The search for the basic stuff of creation was on. Air, wind, fire and water. Phlogiston. Ether. Atoms. Electrons. Photons. Mesons. Baryons. All have been reduced. Some day in the future we men will stand in a room with a huge, complex machine to divide the penultimate structure to the basic essence. And, when we do, we might get laughter.

Health Careless

The U.S. spends on health care the equivalent of 300% of India's gross domestic product although India has three times the population. So the Americans on health care spend three times the dollars the Indians spend on everything--food, housing, military, health care--everything. Last year the American venture capitalists invested 410 million dollars on health care information technology compared with 30 billion dollars in social media and other technology.

One third of American health dollars go to the 5% of the population that dies every year, usually after an intense 2-3 month illness. Another 30% goes to the 5% with chronic illnesses. 90% of rest of the population (the healthy ones) consumes the last third.

Now there may be some wonderful medical breakthroughs coming, there may be some frauds uncovered, the government may introduce new efficiencies (although they have never done so before) but it is clear that some hard decisions will have to be made. After all the promises made, one might even say cruel.

Cab Thoughts 2/18/12

Kimberly Clark raised the price of their Huggies diapers 7% and immediately lost 8% of their market share.

A huge debate is rising in Pennsylvania over the offering of tax breaks to a company choosing in which state to build a "cracker plant" (a plastics line). This is being called "corporate blackmail" as if the rules were not written by the states. More, did anyone scream very long when the state ignored the referendum and built two stadiums in Western Pennsylvania?

If there ever was an argument in favor of the "shoot him if he runs, cut him if he stands" approach to the drug dealer it is Whitney Houston. This lovely, talented, well raised and complete woman had her life metamorphosed into ineptness, dependency and embarrassment by her degenerate boyfriend and enabler and guide through a demonic world of drug use. No doubt he will become the grieving lover, a subject of unending sympathy and support. It makes you want to return to Dante and figure out which of the layers of hell is most appropriate for him. It might be a good subject for a web site. The entire nation could expiate its feelings trying to figure which torture to put Brown through for eternity. If that is too much for the culture, maybe we should just bring back the duena.

Autor from MIT has published a new paper on disability insurance. In 1988, 4% of men and 2% of women aged 40 to 59 received disability benefits. By 2008, the men's rate was almost 6% and the women's, 5%. Through the 1970s, strokes, heart attacks and cancer were major causes. Now, mental problems and back pain dominate (54% of awards in 2009, nearly double 1981's 28%). As physically grueling construction and factory jobs have shrunk, disability awards have gone up. For many recipients, the disability program is a form of long-term unemployment insurance. Lawyers and other advocates are entitled to 25% of back benefits up to $6,000 per case. Their total payments approach $1.5 billion annually. This could be a metaphor for the problems facing government programs. People in need served by a program with good intentions expanded by greed, lawyers, sympathy and the lack of political will to make hard decisions to control it.

The BMW is the car bought in the U.S. by people with the highest income. Second richest car buyers? The Chevy Volt. Does this mean the tax breaks we give buyers of the Volt go to the upper 1%?

If the government is allowed to turn the recent attack on religious freedom into an argument over birth control, the democracy is too dumb to survive.

The recent meetings that the Feds have been having with entrepreneurs of different states has resulted in some consensus. Most believe that capital is too hard to get and that workers are not trained well enough to take positions. One thing the Feds are saying is that there is an astonishing amount of data available in health care that is waiting to be analyzed and they expect a boom like the boom when the military released their GPS data. As a side note, there is a huge amount of untapped data in government research labs that hold similar promise. Really quite a vision.

Social Insecurity

As we hurtle towards the revenue/expense day of reckoning, some canards have surfaced to prepare us emotionally for the outrages that will be inflicted upon us. One of the more laughable is the attempt to justify withholding Social Security from people, partly or completely. There are usually two ruses.

The first is that Social Security is an entitlement plan, something voted on by legislators to provide special help or advantages to some predetermined needy group. What this denies is that Social Security was legislated as a sort of safety net for all people, most of whom were felt by our wiser leaders not capable of setting up on their own. The money was taken from those people (everyone but federal employees) to be held in escrow and then was to be paid back to the contributors in an amount related to their contribution but without the assumption of earnings. So the "entitlement" of Social Security is actually a tax to be repaid to the citizen at a certain age.

The second ludicrous innuendo is that people get back far more than they put in. This lie implies that people are gaming a system that no one in their right mind would have joined voluntarily and that the federal employees--including the lawmakers who created it--had the good sense to avoid. A simple way of analyzing this lie is to look at the value of the dollar over the years. One dollar in 1970 bought a certain amount of goods. Those same goods in 2010 cost five dollars and eighty cents. That is a loss of buying power of 82.76%. That is an annualized return of negative 4.08%. Annualized. Sometimes it's more, sometimes less but, on average over the last 40 years, the dollar lost 4.08% in buying power a year. So every Social Security recipient is receiving dollars that are much less valuable than the dollars he originally gave up in Social Security taxes.

Most Social Security victims would be happy just to get back what they paid in original dollars but, now, most would probably take the total in depreciated dollars. (Again, not with any interest he could get in the real world.) But the idea that anyone who paid into the system is getting a bargain here is just idiotic.

Barack Hatfield

Somebody whacks 4 Iranian scientists, the Americans target Gaddafi, the Iranians try to kill the Saudi ambassador in the U.S., a mullah puts a contract out on Rushdie, the Seal team murders bin Laden, the Russians poison a dissident in England. All of these attacks are carried out with great righteousness. But it does sound very much like the world of Don Corleone.

These events all supersede treaties and national agreements, relying instead upon some unwritten and presumably commonly held standard among some other, sometimes unstated, groups. Bin Laden is certainly an American enemy (and a Pakistani guest), but who is the Iranian scientists' enemy? And Gaddafi, who wrote the standard he violated and who gets to bring him to justice? And who sat on Rushdie's court?

Laws and agreements are all we have between civilization and the Hatfields and the McCoys. The weaponry has simply outgrown those tribes.

A Game of Her Own

I know a woman who was, in her youth, one of the girls from "A Game of Their Own." She was a terrific baseball player and was one of the first recruited to go on tour with the women's baseball teams. Her parents were dead and she lived with her brother, all staunch Catholics who could not imagine a girl traveling on her own from town to town playing baseball. Consequently they declined and she never went. But she was something of a women's baseball legend and this week was asked to throw the first ball out at the Pirate opener.

She uses a walker now, says she is too old and weak and doesn't want to embarrass herself...BUT...her friends brought her some balls and gloves and she's practicing, just in case.

Holmes, but not Sherlock #1

The firestorm of abortifacts and contraception in health care continues against all possible odds. All of these medications are available with more ease than any other medication I can think of and yet these arcane arguments continue to burst from various cloisters to plague our public lives. While the symbolism of the religious groups is understandable, the intensity and persistence of their opponents is less so. It almost has the reciprocal religious fervor.

It strikes a familiar note. A number of years ago a battle over forced sterilization developed. This was in America. Forced sterilization. It went to the Supreme Court and was overturned but Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the Progressive's leading thinkers, wrote for the minority in favor of forced sterilization. His argument went along the lines that the society can ask the sacrifice of a life or limb from a soldier, sacrifice of reproductive capacity for the betterment of the State is no worse. This is an argument of a highly regarded man.

Fine-tuning people's lives for the betterment of the State using the perceptions of self-proclaimed experts and wise-men is the hallmark of the Progressive. They are never embarrassed or ashamed. They have become the modern equivalent of the excesses of Medieval religion, clearly crazy but somehow protected by the aegis of deeply held faith.

Sunday Sermon 2/12/12

Today's readings include the moderately arrogant letter by Paul ("Imitate me as I imitate Christ"), a quality that peeks through occasionally and supports people who hate him anyway and Christ's healing the leper, another brilliant piece of writing. In this encounter Christ is approached by a leper and Christ heals him. He does it by touching him. Touching a leper was simply an impossible thought at the time. Although we know now leprosy is actually hard to transmit, at the time of Christ it was worse than AIDS is now in reputation. Christ's touching him was a touch of genius as it transcended the usual human response and implied intergalactic confidence. Then Christ tells him to show himself to the priests--the culture's current diagnosticians according to Mosaic law--but otherwise to keep the cure to himself. The King James version is pretty strict but the modern version is almost playful, as if Christ knows full well that it will be impossible for the man to remain silent. The result is that the public response is so great that Christ has to leave town and live in the desert--isolated like a leper.

The priests were the arbitrators of the diagnosis at the time because it was assumed that illness of the body had some connection with illness of the spirit. There was some vague personal or familial quid pro quo involved so that illness had some spiritual overtones. Indeed, later in the same writing Christ heals another man and is challenged by the priests as to whether this means he believes he can forgive sins and Christ asks, "Which is easier, to say your sins are forgiven or to heal an illness?" He then heals the illness and sends the priests home with a headache.

Cab Thoughts 2/11/12

Of the 200 billion, BILLION, dollars given to charity in the U.S. every year, one third or more goes to the infrastructure of raising it. Some "charities" are nothing but infrastructure.

A national test of 12th graders in the U.S. (called TIMSS) recently has scored them the lowest of all the developed nations so the government stopped giving the test.

The Death of Abundance
"A flat yield curve, in contrast, is a disincentive for lenders to lend unless there is sufficient downside room for yields to fall and provide bond market capital gains." This is a quote from William Gross from PIMCO, the biggest and best regarded bond manager in the western world. There are a number of factors that cause people to hold and not lend money (lending is essential for growth and development.) One is risk, the fear that you will not get your money back. The other is a flat yield curve, where people who lend money for a long term earn little more than those who lend for a short period. In essence, the low long term rates are such a bargain no one will lend. We have both situations now, the inhibition of lending because of the perceived risk involved and the flat yield where long term rates are so close to short term rates no one will lend. And, of course, short term loans can not be used to build any type of long term plan. So Mr. Gross asks, "Where does credit go when it dies?" It, like all things, disintegrates. "A 30-50 year virtuous cycle of credit expansion which has produced outsize paranormal returns for financial assets – bonds, stocks, real estate and commodities alike – is now delevering because of excessive “risk” and the “price” of money at the zero-bound. We are witnessing the death of abundance and the borning of austerity, for what may be a long, long time." (Another opposite, strongly held and well argued view is here:
"Abundance -- The Future is Better Than You Think", written by Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, X PRIZE Foundation Chairman/CEO, and Steven Kotler, Science Journalist.)



This anti-Catholic decision from the government is a meaningful one. The essence is the government's claim that they can define what a religious belief is, that this is a women's rights question and not a religious one. This has huge implications if unchallenged but, while a constitutional usurpation, it might work to the benefit if the Washington self-anointed. This will raise havoc with Romney's Mormonism and will cause great angst among the various stripes of Catholics. And antagonism. This brings all the religious problems to the fore. An ugly decision.

These decisions of the administration are so self-righteous and often so disruptive that one wonders after a while if this is not purposeful. One could not be wrong so often randomly; this looks as if it has taken some effort. Obama's hallmark statement that if coal-fired plants were closed as he wanted "electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket" is telling. He is working within a higher moral code which the rest of us may not see or understand. His cabinet meetings are sort of like a conclave of Cardinals. We are to hear, genuflect and, if not obey, at least accept.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported on the estimates of the top 20 occupations in the next 10 years. Of the top 20 occupations, just five require an associate's degree or more. All together, 30% of the projected job openings over the decade will require less than a high-school diploma, and 40%, only a high school diploma. Less than 20% will require a bachelor's or more. Almost three-quarters will require no more than brief on-the-job training, and 85% will require no previous relevant job experience.This does not fit the picture painted by our esteemed leaders. These jobs paint the picture of a poorly educated, low paying job force, low skilled and static. This does not look like the return of the middle class and anyone who says education improvements will make a difference on a national level is simply not being honest, at least with these numbers in front of them. The lack of a degree will certainly limit, but the degree may not advance.

The Risks of Innovation

A wonderful story from Pliny via the new book Abundence by Diamandis and Koltler.
"In one of his later volumes, Earth, book XXXV, Pliny tells the story of a goldsmith who brought an unusual dinner plate to the court of Emperor Tiberius.

The plate was a stunner, made from a new metal, very light, shiny, almost as bright as silver. The goldsmith claimed he’d extracted it from plain clay, using a secret technique, the formula known only to himself and the gods. Tiberius, though, was a little concerned. The emperor was one of Rome's great generals, a warmonger who conquered most of what is now Europe and amassed a fortune of gold and silver along the way. He was also a financial expert who knew the value of his treasure would seriously decline if people suddenly had access to a shiny new metal rarer than gold. "Therefore," recounts Pliny, "instead of giving the goldsmith the regard expected, he ordered him to be beheaded."

This shiny new metal was aluminum, and that beheading marked its loss to the world for nearly two millennia."

Ahab the Felon

A federal court is considering whether to include constitutional protection to five orcas--killer whales--owed by Seaworld. The complaint, brought by PETA, asks that rights against slavery be applied to the five mammals held in captivity at a Seaworld park.

"This case is on the next frontier of civil rights," said PETA's attorney Jeffrey Kerr, representing the five orcas. One assumes this case is pro bono. The orcas have made no public statement.

There are many observations one can make here, not the least is the danger of lawyers with too much time on their hands. What is of most concern is the lack of embarrassment, the lack of mortification. What rewards does this culture offer that would induce such a disregard for logic, common sense and triviality? How could a clear thinking individual allow himself to be associated with such an intellectual outrage? How could a lawyer allow himself to trivialize his own profession? And how could the judge allow law to be so abused?

Certainly no one is exempt from debating angels and pinheads.

A Tee Shirt for the Tea Party

Santorum's recent success shows only that there is considerable conservative sentiment in the nation and there are apparently few people to lead it. This nation has been blessed in the past with good men emerging when the country needed them but now we are on the brink of important decisions that will either be made or forced upon us and we are looking at no leaders and questionable thinkers.

We are between Barack and a hard place. (patent pending)

Modest Proposal: Reassessing "The Gallbladder in Room Six"

A physician walked into an outpatient department waiting room and asked for the family of a patient he had just operated on. The attending nurse called out a number, like a deli. The family came forward. Afterwards, the nurse corrected the doctor for using a patient's name as it violated HIPPA confidentiality laws. Numbers were to be used instead.

Perhaps instead we could all be given aliases when we are born. We could have two names like two sets of accountant's books, one to be used in real life and one when governmental agencies require privacy. We could pick them like avatars: Red Rider, Comanche 107, Hot Metal, STDemon.

Speaking of STDs, it might be of interest to know that everyone with a positive STD test must be reported to the government. No HIPPA there. And they must report their sexual contact. But those guys are ahead of the curve. The girls all report Jay-Z, the boys give up Angelina Jolie.

Cab Thoughts 2/6/12

The Republicans must be the dumbest political organization since the Know Nothing Party. They have taken a president with the worst economy since the depression, who had no issue to run on, a guy who is distant, didactic, mysterious, devoted to a virtually homicidal political philosophy of the early 1900's and made him an island of calm and intelligence.

The six-year graduation rate for public four-year programs is 55 percent. In addition, about one-third of bachelor's holders are in jobs that don't require degrees.

While the Obama decision to mandate abortifacts for all hospitals is a stupid, defiant, arrogant and probably unnecessary line in the sand, is this intrusion into matters of faith much different than the decision on Mormon polygamy?

Just out of curiosity, who delegated Buffett as the spokesman for financially successful working people? And what are the requirements for the job?

Exciting Super Bowl. But what does it say about the game itself when, at the end, one team tries not to score and the other team tries to let them score?

Books and the End of the West

"Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn't change. Will there still be readers 50 years from now who feel that way? Who have that hunger for something permanent and unalterable? I don't have a crystal ball. But I do fear that it's going to be very hard to make the world work if there's no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government."

Who is this and what is he talking about? The Constitution? A radical Supreme Court decision? The right to bear M-50s? No, this is Jonathan Franzen, the well regarded American author, talking about....e-readers! E-readers are going to undermine the democracy, ruin our search for human rights and destroy the justice system.

Hyperbole is a fine and dandy technique but at some point does exaggeration undermine how seriously you will be taken?

Political Science #2

Professor Howarth's PR support from the Park Foundation, an environmental activist group, raises some fascinating problems.

Earthjustice, Earthworks, the Delaware Riverkeeper, Otsego 2000, the Community Environmental Defense Council, Catskill Mountainkeeper, Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy are all similar groups, many supported financially by The Park Foundation. The Park Foundation had net assets of $246 million in 2009 and spent $23 million, some $17.6 million to grants and contributions to environmental groups, most in opposition to gas drilling.

These are not lobbyists. These are huge political and economic groups, with private interests and aims, masquerading as concerned citizens. Their annual expenses were recently reported as over 126 million dollars.

Now this information was not reported by a source friendly to these economic groups ( http://eidmarcellus.org/2011/11/28/homespun-or-just-spin/ ) but, if anywhere near true, science and technology are increasingly becoming the instruments of simple propaganda and our ability to make rational decisions about any of these questions will become increasingly compromised.