Bureaucracy and the laws of physics; Health Care Mandates delayed; Duck Dynasty

View 803 Monday, December 23, 2013

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

 

Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave.

Syrian Freedom Fighters

 

What we have now is all we will ever have.

Conservationist motto

 

If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan. Period.

Barrack Obama, famously.

 

President Obama has by executive decree without so far as I can see any legal authority to do so postponed the enforcement of various provisions of the Affordable Health Care Act. A few months ago he shut down the government to prevent Congress from giving him a mandate to do that.

Meanwhile, leading by example, on the last day of the enrollment period the President symbolically signed up for a health care policy under the Affordable Care Act. It will be of no effect since the military provides health care for the President and his family while he is in office, and there are provisions for providing this care for the rest of his life, so he hardly needed the policy; still, it sets a good example since his premium payment will buck up the system.

Two reactions to a mail note last night:

While the Cole story is amusing, it turns out it’s a little too good to be true:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/physics.asp

It’s fairly believable when you consider the alleged science coming out of the Obama administration (particularly, but not exclusively, the EPA).

 

Literally ONE SECOND of googling debunked the ‘A Forwarded Letter" you propagated via your list.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/physics.asp

Do you feel that simply because you are reposting something, you have no duty to even the most cursory of fact checking? Or is it your intent to undermine the confidence in the Government by spreading known lies?

One of the advantages of being me is that if I do find something amusing and probably too good to be true, someone will tell me, and it is easy enough to correct: and in doing so often provides something else to comment on.

In this case several comments are too obvious to be needed.

Of course the major lesson is that such a story needed to be declared false. When I was a lad the notion that any executives of the United States Government would believe that they could get a law of physics repealed would have been automatically thought to be a joke. I fear that I continue to have that prejudice. I find it hard to believe that any adult can reach that level of naiveté. Alas, reality tempts me to different conclusions, but I generally find that it isn’t being naïve but protecting self interests that generate many seeming gaffes by government officials.

Example: California in a fit of absence of mind voted for bonds for a high speed railway from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Unlike bullet trains in Japan which go through earthquake country but do so on relatively flat ground, getting from LA to SF requires going over mountains and repeated crossing of major fault lines. The initiative which created the bonds had some specific provisions on date of start and cost limits. It was clear from the day it passed that it could not meet the conditions of the bond due to physical limitations. There was also a provision that the high speed rail had to meet its own operating costs, something extremely unlikely due again to the elevations changes and the need to compete with already operating airlines which have driven the cost of LA to Bay Area travel down to a bare minimum.

Nevertheless California engineers and draughtsman and economists and managers have worked on this project for years, spent billions of dollars, and have built not one mile of railroad. They insist on starting the project, in one case on a route in the Central Valley from a place no one wants to go from a place no one is in. They almost built that dozen or so miles before a sane judge put a stop to it. They continue to plan and propose and to demand more and more money since the initiative provided less than ten billion and the project will cost at least $50 billion and probably several multiples of that – moot because it will never be built, but we can expect billions more to be spent anyway.

I cannot believe that anyone in the California bureaucracy believes that they can actually build an economically viable high speed passenger railway from LA to SF that would be declared safe to operate, or indeed that any rational person with any exposure to the truths of physics and engineering could believe that. There are too many mountains in the way, and one of the ranges is named, appropriately, the Temblor Range. This is one of those cases not adequately explained by incompetence.

Everyone knows there will never be such a railway, but the bureaucrats continue to spend money, mostly on their own six figure salaries.

As was easily predicted, the Robertson Clan has said they cannot conceive of the Duck Dynasty series continuing without their patriarch remaining on the show.

When I was growing up in the Old South, the official position of the largest church in the area, Southern Baptists, was that I was going to Hell: first as a Unitarian, which was the religion of my parents, and then as a Catholic (converted by the Christian Brothers when I got to CBC high school). There was no doubt in their minds that I needed a new conversion. (I got one, to High Church Anglican, but after decades returned to Rome.)  As a result I didn’t have many Baptist friends, but then as a geek who started first grade at age five — birthday in August, and I even had a stint on the Whiz Kids – I had a strange collection of friends anyway. A couple of them were Southern Baptists, who were concerned about my religion, but were less concerned about my conviction that the law ought to be color blind and our legally segregated society was wrong. After all, we were all God’s children, and heck, I might even see the light and go get a real baptism. Incidentally I encountered some of the same sentiments among the Campbellite faculty members at Pepperdine, who were genuine friends but were convinced that I was doomed. Pity, but there it is. [Note: Wikipedia states that Campbellite is a “mildly pejorative” term, and that the Churches of Christ have the same objection that some Lutherans have to the description Lutheran; I didn’t and don’t intend anything more than a reference to origin.)

It will be interesting to see if A&E is willing to abandon 11 million viewers a week plus the large number of viewers of the reruns.

Charlie Sheen said

"hey Mallard brained
Phil Robertso!
you have offended and hurt so many dear friends of mine,
who DO NOT have the voice or the outreach that I do. ….

your statements were and are
abhorrently and mendaciously unforgivable.
the idea that you have a job
outside of dirt-clod stacking is a miracle.
the only ‘Dynasty’ you are attached to might be the
re-runs of that dated show."

Of course Sheen had a few viewers himself, but that didn’t save his show from his off screen comments and activities. Unlike the Robertson clan, though, the cast of Two and a Half Men chose to continue the show without him.

The Sermon on the Mount tells us:

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

We continue to be under construction, sort of, https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/under-construction-sort-of/ and I invite comments on the site, particularly suggestions, but also complaints. I’m not a web designer.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.