View 598 November 23 - 29, 2009 (original) (raw)
Monday, November 23, 2009
We had both view and mail over the weekend both Saturday and Sunday. There was quite a lot of mail on both days, much of it worth while. If you want an example of the kind of fuzzy thinking that seems dominant today, see today's LA Times op ed on "Ft. Hood and the bugaboo of political correctness,"
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/
la-oe-rodriguez23-2009nov23,0,5458020.column
which ends with this:
But however PC things were during the major's career, what went wrong with him and the system surely can't be reduced to one bugaboo; it is deeper, broader and more complicated than that.
In any case, as conservatives should know, political correctness doesn't kill people -- angry, crazy people do.
More here after my walk.
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On my morning walk I saw a concrete mixer powered by a diesel generator, a very large one, mounted on the back of a separate truck. The mixer was being fed by an internal combustion engine (diesel or gasoline) small shovel from a pile of sand laid out in the street. I don't know what they are going to pour: the site in question is one of two MacMansions built on the site of a former double lot bungalow on Cantura St. Cantura is the street arched over by sycamore trees that is the setting for a number of TV shows, such as the former Malcolm in the Middle, and is usually what we show when we want to show off Studio City.
Not far away, a shop vacuum cleaner was getting its electricity from a small generator set in the bed of a pickup truck that probably brought the automobile groomer and his equipment. Not all that uncommon a sight, and except for the noise no reason to notice either of those, but I began idly to wonder how much the builders will have to pay Al Gore to make up for the carbon impact, and similarly for the car owner who was getting his car detailed. Possibly nothing yet, but it can't be long now. Selling carbon offsets is nice work if you can get it, and you can get it if you have enough influence in Washington.
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As it happens, today's Wall Street Journal has another article by Lomberg on carbon impact and other matters of concern to real people. http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB100014240527487048884045
74550354125452242.html
It's worth your attention in that it invites you to think about real impacts on real people right now.
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If it cost $300 million to get Landrieu to vote to allow the bill to be debated, what in the world will it cost to get her to vote for the bill itself? And now that she has shown how effective shakedown tactics can be, what will others charge? We may not begin to have seen the deficit spending that the health care bill will cost.
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A clueless talk show host is asking how it can cost more to have insurance if there is a government option. Of course it's simple: if the government mandates that everyone have coverage for mental illness, naturopathic medicine, osteopathy, chiropractic, homeopathic medicine, pregnancy and pre-natal care, various other things, there is no end to what it will cost. You won't get a choice -- and the lobbyists will control the lists.
Of course the clueless talk show host is railing that "insurance companies make those decisions now" regarding what you have covered. Yes in the sense that you bought a specific policy and it either covered naturopathic medicine or it didn't; you knew that or should have known that when you bought the policy. But I don't expect lawyer talk show hosts to think logically and this one has the usual contempt for anyone who doesn't see things the way he does.
As to pre-existing conditions: if you must cover all conditions, it's going to cost. If someone comes in with a very long term disability and gets the same rate that a young healthy person gets, the premium for the young healthy person is going to rise. Surely everyone understands that? Now it may be right and just to make the young healthy person pay for the man who smoked himself into emphysema (you see him in anti-tobacco TV ads); but that is another discussion. I am still unsure why the young and healthy must pay for the old and unhealthy, but since Medicare Advantage is paying my Kaiser dues for me I can hardly complain. Of course I paid my own Kaiser dues until I turned 65, and I still pay Self Employment Tax, so perhaps I am paying at least some of my own. Perhaps a collective responsibility is a simple requirement for a civilized liberal democracy, and that is the wave of the future: but I still wonder what is the fountain of justice, what is the source of these moral imperatives that are fairly new. I do not mean that the doctrine of being one's brother's keeper is new: but it derives, I think, from the Judao-Christian tradition, and that is verbotten as a source of moral imperative in our diverse society. There are religions that don't accept your obligation to anyone else, just as there are people who insist that you can't even have a manger in the public square. If I can't light City Hall windows in a cross shaped pattern on Christmas Eve, why do you have to pay for Aunt Emma's emphysema?
But I ramble, and I have said this before.
Universal health care is expensive, and we have a terrible deficit already. It will be worse. Keep thinking about runaway inflation. If you missed my thoughts on that Saturday, you might want to have a look.
The bottom line is simple: the Great Recession is not over. Experience of the Great Depression argues that heavy deficit spending will not end it. If you have not read Amity Schlaes The Forgotten Man (available on Kindle) then do so if you want to understand what was tried and what did and did not work during the Great Depression. Alas, it's pretty clear that many in the current administration have paid little attention to the past.
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