Kabuki Health Care and a new IPCC theory is gamed

View 791 Saturday, September 28, 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

It has been a hectic week, and I have really had little to say about the main story: the kabuki theatre in Washington, with the President threatening to shut down the government if the Republicans won’t give him everything he wants on Obamacare, and the Tea Party Republicans saying they won’t fund Obamacare, and the Senate playing its strange little games. I don’t know how it will play out, because there are Real Uncertainties here, assuming that you believe that a few Senators or a couple of dozen Members of the House still have vestiges of free will.

As I write this the House has sent the Senate a bill – keep in mind that under the Constitution it had to originate in the House – that defunds most of ObamaCare. The Senate, with the aid of a few Republicans voting with all the Democrats, shut down debate, after which the Democrats alone with no Republican votes refunded ObamaCare and sent it back to the House, where after a few rounds of kabuki dances, it was once again modified, this time to delay ObamaCare for a year and remove on of its particularly onerous taxes on medical equipment. The Senate probably won’t pass that, and the President has vowed to veto it if it does pass, which means that Monday at midnight the government runs out of money. Of course that doesn’t actually mean that all the soldiers and police will go home, or that air traffic controllers won’t go to work, or that Bunny Inspectors won’t continue to attend stage magician shows to be sure that if the prestidigitators use a rabbit they have a federal license to do so (unless they kill the rabbit as part of the show in which case no license is needed) – such essential parts of the government will continue. White House tours, and the National Zoo and the arts galleries and many municipal services in the District of Columbia, and anything highly visible that makes life easier for the citizens will be closed. TSA will lose no people but you can be sure they will do their job of making this experience annoying.

Alas, I have no real advice for the few sane people left in Congress. My own proclivity would be to restore ObamaCare to its pristine condition – fund it on the condition that there are no exemptions, no exceptions, no White House fiddling: no ObamaCare and water, just the pure ObamaCare as passed without a single Republican vote, and owned entirely by the Democrats. You asked for it, you threatened to shut down the government to get it, now you have it, but you will not exempt anyone from it: you get it as you passed it, or not at all. I am not sure how to word that, but I am sure there is sufficient expertise in the House.

Newt Gingrich has said that the Republicans should defund it and let the government shut down; it worked in his day, and it will work now. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/20/gingrich-favors-house-republican-budget-push-on-obamacare/comment-page-1/ If he were Speaker now it is what he would do. He knows more about these matters than most and he has thought about it a lot, and he may well be right.

Meanwhile we have a few more rounds to play before time runs out and they start laying off the Smithsonian staff (but not the Department of Agriculture bunny inspectors).

More depressing statistics. In Pennsylvania about 47% of the students read at an acceptable level. In a separate study, 99.5% of the teachers (average salary with benefits $110,000) have been rated at full competence or higher. Maybe if we shut the government down some of the money that allows states to pay teachers unable to raise student literacy to the level the US had fifty years ago could be saved. It’s not hard to get literacy up to 85% and above, and it doesn’t take expensive teachers to do it, but so long as the money flows into the current system nothing will change.

And I happened to see a skit from some new TV show in which a college student faces financial difficulties and suggests to his father that they take a second mortgage on the house to bail him out so he can continue his studies. I saw no more than that – it was a clip advertising a new show – but there is horror enough there. Apparently the goal is to convert every house holder in the nation into a bondsman. The entire middle class is to be saddled with debt; that will keep those people docile. The academics will continue to be paid handsomely (particularly in private institutions where the children of the professorate get free tuition, so they graduate without debt). The middle class become bondsmen. And so it goes. And so long as the money flows in academia will keep raising its costs to absorb it. Is there anyone who doesn’t know this? But they never catch wise.

People used to work their way through college without incurring a lifetime of debt. Colleges turned out school teachers, civil servants, even engineers. We can’t do that any longer, but we do have really well paid college teachers and administrators. I wonder how we got along without all that in the past?

And the new channels are full of the story of how 95% of the world’s best scientists now understand how global warming works, and it’s all a matter of heating the oceans – never thought of that with the billion dollar models, but now we know. So now we understand it, all it takes is more money to the scientists and we’ll understand it and get to work on fixing things.

 

World’s top climate scientists confess: Global warming is just QUARTER what we thought – and computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2420783/Worlds-climate-scientists-confess-Global-warming-just-QUARTER-thought–computers-got-effects-greenhouse-gases-wrong.html#ixzz2gGEjcX5Q

But the spin is on, and they no longer admit anything of the sort.

And I’m getting depressed. I have some good stuff on a rational approach to health care, and some other matters, and there is some good news from science, but this week most of the news has been depressing. I think I ought to go to bed.

I’ll have to find the original mail that pointed me to this place, but if you have a moment, have a look. It’s really odd. http://imgur.com/opNnoOx