Presti-Libby-tation

The Bush administration must be thrilled that Libby is being tried, and that the national debate centers on who outed Valerie Plame, because national attention has been effectively redirected from the question of why she was outed. It was a move worthy of Johnny Cochrane for the administration to dispute the question of who sent Wilson to Niger, rather than addressing his conclusions, and a move worthy of bovine quarupeds for the media to chase that issue rather than the Bush administration's evident deception.

So let's remember something: President Bush announced in his 2003 State of the Union Address that Iraq had tried to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger, even though that assertion was based on a document from the Italian intelligence service that, by October 2002, the CIA didn't trust, the State Department had warned was a likely forgery, and Wilson had found implausible based on his research earlier in the year. Remeber also that the assertion had been removed from an earlier speech based on a warning from the CIA Director.

In fact, every piece of evidence that the Bush administration's members presented to the public on Iraqi WMDs-- Nigerian uranium, aluminum tubes, mobile chemical labs -- was known to have been discredited by the time Powell addressed the UN. Once these assertions were analyzed and debunked, one after another, there was no evidence left that Iraq posed any kind of threat to the United States, much less an imminent one.

Make no mistake: this was not a "failure of intelligence", but rather a deliberate misuse and distortion of intelligence by the Administration to push a policy that has created a crisis, diminished U.S. credibility worldwide, emboldened al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Iran, and cost us a crapload of money and thousands of U.S. lives. Rather than Libby, it is Bush who should be on trial, in the Senate, for abusing his power in office.

Bush is a traitor.

Impeach him.

Energy IV: There's too many alternatives to count -- especially for Bush

I was going to use this post to describe the various alternative energy sources, having dismissed hydrogen and ethanol as viable replacements for gasoline, and having already pointed out the inherent inefficiency of nuclear fission, but there are a whole crapload: wind, solar, geothermal, hydrodynamic, hydrothermic, etc. There's also nuclear fusion, the energy source of the future, now and for always. I don't have the patience or the knowledge to do the panoply justice, so I'll leave it to this guy.

Part V coming up.

An open letter to journalists and politicians

I have just one request of you folks. When somebody justifies this or that action by the President by quoting the Constitution as saying that he is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, please, please, please tell that person to finish the quote. The full quote, from Article II, section 2 is, "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;".

I'll admit there's quibble room here. Ideologically, I would apply the dependent clause "when called. . . " to both the "Army and Navy . . ." and "the Militia . . .", but grammatically it is equally probable, or even moreso, that it applies only to "the Militia. . .".

Even granting the latter interpretation, it is clear that the National Guard (which constitutes the state militias of our day) cannot be called into service by the Executive Branch, but only by the Legislative Branch: absent a specific act of Congress, the President cannot command the National Guard.

I call on anyone reading this to cite the Congressional Act that has called the National Guard into actual service, because the only acts I have read actually "authorizing" the President to carry out hostilities in Afghanistan and Iraq have included such phrases as "as he deems necessary" -- yielding their authority to declare war or activate the National Guard to the Executive Branch, which the Constitution does not authorize Congress to do.

Politicians, you have sworn an oath the uphold and defend the Constitution, so you'd damned well better already know this -- and you'd damned well better start remembering the whole description of the Commander-in-Chief authority. Journalists, you're supposed to hold these jackasses to account, so you'd damned well better start challending folks who try to slide by with only the first part of the Article II, section 2.

The dead hand of history

Bummer for Steve Jobs, no?

Not about the investigation into post-dated stock options, because, well, that practice is tawdry.

I mean about his house.

Thomas Jefferson said it best: "Life belongs to the living." As might be inferred by my commentary on the estate tax, I don't think that the dead own property. History is a guide, not a straitjacket, and an individual's property rights must prevail over abstractions like ethnic heritage, community flavor, or historical significance.

After all, this house isn't the only example of Spanish Colonial archetecture: there must be enough examples to define the genre. There are also pictures, floor plans, and all manner of historical documentation to preserve the memory of the building if it were to disappear. Richard Moe should buy his own fucking house, and not presume to tell the owner of that house what to do with it. Clotilde Luce sold the fucking house, so she has no more say than the previous owners of any of y'all's houses. Virginia Gail Anderson didn't inherit the fucking house, so she has no more claim to the property than the heirs of the guy who built any of y'all's houses. If the community wants to preserve some sort of flavor, they should buy the fucking property from Jobs, at whatever price he asks, or shut the fuck up.

I am fortunate to live in a community that has no covenants, because a lot of communities in Colorado Springs do. On the broader question of community residents presuming to try to control property they do not, themselves, own . . . well, I guess I covered that. The only exception I would allow is restricting use of property that materially harms individuals, their property, or fair use of that property (like loud noise or bright lights that prevent other property owners from keeping their house quiet or dim) -- and offense of taste or sensibilities does not qualify, nor does some abstract notion of property value.

I mean, who out there would want some self-appointed authority to tell you whether or not you could modify your property as you desired?

Government negotiation, raising the price of medicine

So the day after I pick on Schwarzeneggar for trying to turn California into Canada, the U.S. House of Representatives votes to institute price controls on prescription drugs.

No, wait: they said "negotiate" on prices.

The federal government already negotiates with medical providers, as follows: the feds say they'll pay x, and if medical providers accept it, they charge that much -- to government-covered (that is, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.) customers; to everyone else, the providers raise the price to make up the shortfall. If the providers don't accept that amount, they don't take government-covered customers.

For example, when I worked in social services in Indiana, the state issued new Medicaid cards to Medicaid recipients. Rather than simply verifying an identification number on a paper card, providers would have to acquire card-readers to read the magnetic stripe on the new cards. The result? Several of the individuals we served had to find new doctors, because their current ones didn't want the added expense and hassle of the card readers.

Anyhow, there are two ways this proposed "negotiation" would work. One would be to start limiting the choices of Medicare recipients as to the pharmaceutical products they could get on the taxpayer's tab. That's fine with me, because, hell, I'm the one paying for these folks. Alternately, and more likely, the government shall have to pay more than they want, if they want a broad-enough level of coverage for Medicare recipients. Meanwhile, private insurance companies may have a harder time keeping their own costs low, as pharmacies try to recoup lost profits by charging more to non-Medicare customers. And the uninsured? Well, they'll pay the most of all. This has, after all, been the practical effect of government price-setting through Medicare already: inflation in healthcare costs for everybody else. Extending this practice to drugs will make'em more pricey for everybody else. Not to mention that we're all stuck paying to subsidize these freeloaders to begin with.

I find myself in the welcome position of being able to set aside Bush-bashing by saying that I agree with his unwillingness to cause government to "negotiate" drug prices. Oops, out of position, because Bush is the $&*#ing moron who pushed and signed this ridiculous drug benefit to begin with. Sigh. I've said it all before.

What's an iPhone?

So Cisco's management should read my post on this. And so, I guess, should you, because all I'm going to say here is that Cisco can call their iPhone the Cisco iPhone, and Apple can call their iPhone the Apple iPhone. Nobody's hurt by that.

What toilet-training can teach us about spreading democracy

So, after about two and a half months of my actively trying to toilet-train my son, including two months of his being able to urinate in the toilet independently, he finally defecated independently in the potty. Granted, I still had to wipe his butt, but that's a vast improvement over wiping his butt (and possibly his legs), and washing the poop off his training underpants (and possibly his pants, socks, and shirt) before he could achieve this awesome victory.

It actually hasn't been that bad, so much as frustrating. I started out using the Toilet training in less than a day procedure, and, sure enough, by the end of the day he knew how to pull down his pants, sit on the potty, get up, pull up his pants, dump the pot of the potty into the toilet, flush the toilet, restore the pot to the potty, and wash his hands in the sink. Problem was, he didn't feel especially motivated to actually urinate on the potty, much less defecate there. On occasion, he would actually go through the whole sitting-on-the-potty drill, and pee in his pants the moment he'd finished washing his hands.

It became clear that he didn't even want to pee in the potty. It was almost two weeks later that he actually did, but he cried and required constant encouragement (and bodily force) to stay on the toilet. Two days later, though, he suddenly got up and went to the potty, where he peed and followed the rest of the routine.

Poop, though, was the problem. It was similar to the pee: he seemed afraid to do it, and even emphatically said, "No poop in potty!" One traumatic defecation followed, then a less traumatic one, but he continued, apparently, to prefer to fill his drawers than the potty. I yelled, I pleaded, I exhorted, I cajoled; I forced him to sit on the potty, I sang songs and played with hand puppets to keep him there; I denied him candy for failing, promised him ice cream to succeed. And nothing really changed.

Then, suddenly, he got up, went to the bathroom (by now a commonplace occurence), and the next thing I heard was his triumphant announcement that he had defecated in the potty.

Sort of like democracy.

Rough segue, I know. But consider this: he was afraid to take responsibility for his own toiletting, or, more accurately, he preferred to let somebody else clean up the mess (to be sure, I'd be fine with his pooping in his pants if he cleaned himself up and did the laundry. . . .). Whatever inducements or reinforcement I offered, he had to make the decision for himself to just do it. All I could really do, in the end, was provide the example of how to use the toilet.

That's the problem with spreading democracy with military force. Democracy must include individual willingness to clean up one's own mess and not oblige others to do so, and that can originate only within a country's citizenry, not from another country. No matter what financial aid or threats of force we can offer, in the end, we can only provide the example, and hope that enough individuals'll finally make the decision to take responsibility for their governance on their own.

I guess George W. never toilet-trained his kids (but he did teach'em how to drink, apparently).

California: Canada, here we come!

Well, I've been silent a while, partially because I didn't want to talk about Iraq anymore. The level of unreality on the situation leaves me only speechless.

So, thank you, Governor Schwarzeneggar!

I have, in a previous post, stated that emergency medical service is in fact an appropriate area of government action, but I specified that the municipality or the county should take care of that. I see that there is a certain obscurantism in that position, because limiting the steady upward spiral of government expenditures in that area requires a brutal, merciless triage process that weeds out the non-emergencies. So I have to commend Schwarzeneggar for recognizing the fundamental problem with universal health care by default and trying to staunch the flow of dollars through that most costly of rat-holes.

Pity he's thinking as a European. Or one of our brethren in Massachussetts.

I've also said before that health care is a myth, that it doesn't exist. There are medical products, medical services, and individual choices on nutrition and lifestyle. The products and services are commodities, produced and provided by private citizens, not rights dispensed by the state or obligations extracted from citizens. These products and services are priced at the level that the market (distorted as it is by subsidies and price supports like Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs), or provided on a charitable basis, at the discretion of the individuals who can provide them. The state has already constrained the ability of medical facilities to be profitable, by requiring provision of service.

What would your grocer do if the state compelled him to give food for free to those who could not demonstrate an ability to pay for it? Or your local hotelier who could not turn away the homeless, nor charge them for their stays?

Health insurance companies are similarly private entities, and they already operate under various state laws requiring them to dispense services without charging what those services are worth. What Schwarzeneggar has proposed is going to essentially destroy private insurance in California, and create a single-payer system. (hence the title of this entry)

We have a laboratory of this, after all; dozens of them. In modern history, several states have initiated price controls, most notably the Soviet Union. The result was the virtual disappearance of goods under price control. It was only when those controls were lifted that products reappeared, and prices stabilized, albeit at a level higher than that set by the controls.

So back to the insurers. I've said before that actuarial work is the root of all evil, but it is the means by which insurers compete: setting premiums that insure that the company shall receive more in premium payments than it shall pay out in claims. State governments already require companies to provide coverage without raising the premium for it, and health insurance premiums for everybody served by those companies rise to compensate for the anticipated outflow. As long as the insurance companies can charge high premiums in general, there is equilibrium in the system. And, of course, if the state requires individuals to purchase health insurance, and pay through taxes for the premiums of others, companies can keep premiums high. Sure, they have to compete, but the companies are shielded from true competition by having a guaranteed market and no limit on premiums. So what'll happen first is that individual and state expenditures on insurance premiums will go up. I predict that within five years, they'll actually outstrip current expenditures for emergency room services. They'll be masked, of course, because individuals will pay the majority of that burden through high premiums, while paying higher taxes to subsidize the policies of others.

At that point, I predict that California will launch an investigation into premium levels, culminating in effective price caps. That's when it'll get fun. Large national companies might try to shift the costs of complying with California's regulations to its other markets, and those companies may be able to stay in the market -- but given the size of California, that effort might not be worth it. Smaller insurers shall have to simply stop serving California. So, of course, with decreased competition will come all the hallmarks of monopolistic or oligopolistic market sectors: crappy service, high fees, etc.

So, I predict, within ten years, California shall be obliged to offer at least a competing insurance system. By then, only the largest companies are likely to be in the market, and they simply shan't be able to compete with a state-run system.

(Of course, if this guy is right, the whole thing'll collapse and it'll be a free market again. Or, at least, as free as it is now.)

Ta-daa! Single-payer. My previous posts should make it obvious that I would view this development as bad, but you may think it's a good idea. All I can say in summary is tell you to study how it all works in Canada. For my part, when the state compels an individual to surrender his labor assets for the benefit of somebody else, that's tyranny.