| Sunday, March
28, 2010
No Fetus Left Behind.
Some 'pro-life advocate':
<http://www.komonews.com/news/local/88971742.html>
- Roland Dobbins
Whatever one's view of abortion this is a shocking
story.
===========
Many Doctors do it for the Money - buffy willow
Jerry,
I was a chemistry instructor at the University level in 1985. Many of my
premed students were very obviously motivated by the money. Those of us
working on PhD's in chemistry and biology viewed them with disdain. The most
prolific cheaters on campus were premed students - many of which got into
medical school. Most were much more concerned with making an A than with
learning the material. That is not to say that there were not many who
wanted to become doctors out of a desire to help people as well. However, a
very small percentage of our current doctors takes the time to volunteer at
a free clinic. They have about the same percentage of altruism as the
general population, no more and no less in my observations. They'll tell you
about providing free services to people who can't pay ... and that is true.
However, they almost always attempt to bill their poor clients and Doctors
provide "free" when they realize they are not going to get paid. "Not taking
new patients" is the standard answer when a poor person walks in the door.
With the same amount of education and intelligence you can be a chemical
or biomedical researcher and make $150,000 a year, or you can be a M.D. and
make $250,000+. Both jobs are equally challenging, and both provide a chance
to make a real improvement in the lives of many.
People choose biomedical research because they love the science. Many
doctors choose medicine because they love to help people, but there are also
many who go to med school for the money and prestige.
I've always felt that you could solve the health care crisis for the poor
by simply mandating each medical professional spend xx% of each month
volunteering at a free clinic. Anyone could go to the clinic, wait in line,
and receive quality care from the same doctors that you and I pay for. Since
we require pro-bono work from attorneys this should pass the
constitutionality test. Just make it part of the licensing fee. Doctors
would raise their rates for the rest of us and we would not require a huge
bureaucracy. But alas, the ravening wolves would not be able to create civil
service jobs with such a simple system. -- -------------------- Jim Coffey
The "professions" (traditionally law and medicine)
were defined as those who worked more for the love of the profession than
for the money; that is, they were midway between being upper class (not
working at all, or working for government or the military) and working f0r
money (being in trade.) In the real world the problem with underpaying
doctors is not that you don't get the very best, but that you don't get the
best of those who work for the money. The same is true (although the pay is
less) for teachers. Money does count.
Isn't what you advocate close to either slavery or
involuntary servitude? That is, I'd hate to be the patient in a free clinic
served by a doctor who is there for fear of losing his license.
============
Turkey and Ergenekon
Dr. Pournelle,
Given your periodic (and often timely) comments on the
relationship between the Turkish state and its military, I thought you would
find this interesting. The moderator of this group is a former British
ambassador to Libya. I am unfamiliar with Frank Rettenberg.
CDB
---------- Forwarded message ----------
MEC Analytical Group
24 March 2010
Turkey and Ergenekon (2)
The various trials connected with the Ergenekon affair
continue to make the headlines in Turkey. On 22 March the government
announced a package of proposed constitutional reforms, described as
necessary to bring Turkey closer to democratic norms required by the bid for
EU membership. Key proposals about the judicial system were immediately
attacked by senior judges as unconstitutional.
We are grateful to Frank Rettenberg for the following
comment:
The Agence France Presse article in the Beirut Star
makes the common error of assuming the Ergenekon investigation is targeted
at one single network. This false belief is largely attributable to sloppy
Turkish press reporting, but official statements by the Turkish government
have helped to muddy the waters.
But there could be no single network, with an overall
command structure, involved here. The “Sledgehammer” and “Cage” plans, as
well as two similar coup plots recently exposed (“Moonlight” and “Blonde
Girl”) appear to have been generated by different groups of active and
retired senior officers at different points in time, and it is far from
clear that any of them proceeded much beyond the planning phase or that the
armed forces were united behind one or the other. “Ergenekon,” however, in
its original formulation, was the code name of a pretty nasty group of
by-and-large junior and field grade officers (probably more in the
gendarmerie than in the army), members of police “special teams,” and
elements of the Turkish mafia. This clandestine outfit operated largely in
Turkey’s southeast against Kurdish targets, but also reportedly, well in the
past, against Armenian nationalists as well. A semi-secret organization with
the acronym JITEM (Gendarmerie Counter-Terror Intelligence), appears to have
been its major element, responsible for a large number of extra-judicial
killings. A key question in the investigation is, of course, at what level
in the legitimate military command structure were Ergenekon’s activities
sanctioned.
That said, there is a link between “Sledgehammer,”
“Cage,” et al and “Ergenekon,” and it is ideological. Every one of these
groups assumed it was, or might in future be, legitimate for the Turkish
Armed Forces to clandestinely create the chaotic social conditions that
could justify a coup d’etat. The exposure of their activities, and the
ideology which spawned them, has diminished Turkish military prestige to the
extent that most observers believe that a coup will not be possible for many
years to come.
MEC Analytical Group
21 March 2010
Turkey and Ergenekon
Opinion in Turkey has been divided for many months
over the spectacular Ergenekon affair, in which many senior military and
other personalities have been charged with a range of violent actions
undertaken or planned against the state. The division has been broadly
between those who believe that the present AK party government, with its
history of links to Islam, was democratically elected and properly
represents modern Turkey, and those who believe that it represents a mortal
threat to Turkey's secularist tradition, traditionally defended by the
military.
We circulate below two articles from the Beirut Daily
Star, the first on developments over the Ergenekon trial itself, and the
second on related moves to amend the Turkish constitution.
Admirals, others face trial over Turkey 'plot': report
By Agence France Presse (AFP) Saturday, March 20, 2010
ISTANBUL: Thirty-three suspects, among them three
admirals, will stand trial in Turkey over alleged plans to carry out attacks
against non-Muslim minorities in a bid to discredit the government, the
Anatolia news agency reported Friday.
The charges were laid out in the latest indictments to
emerge from an investigation into the alleged Ergenekon network, accused of
plans to plunge Turkey into chaos and prompt a military coup against the
ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the offshoot of a now-banned
Islamist movement.
The 33 suspects, who include several navy officers,
risk up to 15 years in jail for “membership of a terrorist organization” in
the trial that will start on June 15, Anatolia said.
They are blamed for an alleged plot, codenamed “Cage
Action Plan,” detailing a series of attacks against Christian, Jewish and
Armenian minorities.
Under the March 2009 plan – first published by the
daily Taraf newspaper in November – the suspects planned to carry out bomb
attacks in minority-populated neighborhoods in Istanbul and the western city
of Izmir, and to kidnap and assassinate prominent members of the
communities.
They planned to blame Islamist militants for the
attacks, thus increasing pressure on the Islamist-rooted government and
paving the way for its overthrow, according to Taraf.
Media reports said the case could be merged two other
cases in which 31 suspects, most of them navy officers, stand accused of an
alleged plot to kill two admirals and blow up a submarine displayed in an
Istanbul museum in a bid to destabilize Turkey.
Dozens of defendants, including several military
figures, are already on trial as part of the investigation into the
Ergenekon network.
Last month, prosecutors also charged 40 military
figures in a separate probe into a 2003 army plot to topple the AKP.
The scale of the operation against the military was
unprecedented and increased the tension between the government and the armed
forces.
Dozens of current or former members of the military
have been arrested in the past few years over similar allegations, and some
have been charged.
The charged men were arrested over the so-called
“sledgehammer” plot, which reportedly dates back to 2003.
Reports of the alleged plot first surfaced in the
liberal Taraf newspaper, which said it had discovered documents detailing
plans to bomb two Istanbul mosques and provoke Greece into shooting down a
Turkish plane over the Aegean Sea. – AFP
Erdogan to meet rivals on charter reform AK Party say
changes part of EU bid Saturday, March 20, 2010
Pinar Aydinli
Reuters
ANKARA: Turkey’s prime minister said on Friday his
party would hold talks with the opposition next week on proposed changes to
the Constitution, which secularists see as a direct challenge by the
Islamic-leaning government.
The ruling AK Party has said it will seek to win
parliamentary approval for the changes – a requirement for Turkey’s European
Union membership bid – but has warned opponents it could hold a referendum
to push through reforms.
“Parliament has the authority, the will and the
strength to pass these reforms. I want to believe the opposition will behave
with common sense. This is a very urgent need for Turkey,” Tayyip Erdogan
told AK Party officials in a speech.
“Our colleagues will ask for appointments from
opposition parties and will share the contents of the reforms next week,” he
added.
The AK Party, which has its roots in political Islam,
says changes are needed to curb powers of a conservative judiciary opposed
to reforms and to bring Turkey closer to EU standards.
Critics accuse the AK Party, which has a huge majority
in parliament, of using liberal reform as a cover for the encroachment of
religious rule, and have threatened to take any changes to the charter to
the Constitutional Court. The AK Party denies it has an Islamist agenda.
Investors are closely monitoring how hard the
government wants to push the changes, which could pit it against a secular
elite with strongholds in the judiciary and the military.
Any attempt at constitutional reforms could
precipitate a snap election at a time the emerging economy is pulling out of
a steep recession but Erdogan has ruled out an early vote.
A general election is due by July next year, and AK is
widely expected to win a third term, but there remain doubts over whether it
will be able to govern alone again.
Changes to Turkey’s constitution, a charter ratified
in 1982 following a military coup two years earlier, are a key requirement
for Turkey’s EU membership bid.
The government has not unveiled its proposed reforms,
but the justice minister has said they would include changing the way judges
are appointed and making it harder to ban political parties, along with
possible reform of the Constitutional Court.
Turkish media has reported the government plans to
include changes to allow leaders of a 1980 coup to be put on trial.
Investors, who favor the AK’s market-friendly
policies, fear that the government’s push to reform the judiciary could
provoke a fresh attempt to ban the party.
In 2008 the AK narrowly avoided closure by the
Constitutional Court after a case was brought against it by the chief
prosecutor. It brought months of political paralysis and wiped out billions
of dollars from Turkish markets.
The situation in Turkey is both grave and serious,
and of far more importance to the US than the attention we are giving it.
=========
Top US Psychiatrist Calls for Ethics Cleanup
http://www.mail.com/Article.aspx/
health/0/APNews/Health/20100323
/U_US-MED-Psychiatrists-Drug-
Money?pageid=1
A matter of interest but I don't know enough to
have a valid comment.
===========
Nuclear
Jerry P:
Going back to the nuclear past, what the original idea
was to centralize the storage of nuclear waste. Several sites were studied
and due to its remoteness, Yucca Mountain was chosen. Now as we are not
storing the waste there, it is being stored at the generating sites.
Actually for several sites, that will not be a problem for some time. But
the objections to Yucca Mountain or any other location arose when the states
realized that that material would be transported through their states, and
they panicked; "Not in MY Back Yard" they said. And Nevada has all the
casino money pouring in and didn't really care. Of course now they might
think again but they know that the gamblers will eventually return, maybe.
But the French were less prone to panic of the press and decided to go their
own way, as they usually do. Now we must realize that reprocessing has a
cost associated with it, but the utilities have been paying for something
that they have not been able to use, a waste storage facility. The basic
problem with Yucca Mountain is that the concept was file and forget, bury it
and never have to think about it again. But how long is forever, and what
does geology tell us about the potential of upset? Not much, but you can
sell the danger of depleted uranium, and the scare mongers have done that.
If you have a brick fireplace there is uranium in the bricks, thank you, and
you are getting radiation from that. So the public can't get past the fear
of uranium and wants the power and doesn't want to know about anything else,
it just scares the stuffing out of them.
So until some brave politician says stop and think,
the public will not do so. The present administration is so focused on the
sky falling, CO2 is a pollutant so stop breathing right now. They don't have
enough focus to look at real solutions that haven't been funded for nearly
20 years, reprocessing gets away from having to store something for a
millennium or so. There are no solutions coming from the government and we
cannot expect any soon. Maybe we should hire the French to take our spent
fuel and reprocess it for us. But the government, which has been collecting
fees from the utilities for all these many years, would have to pay for the
French to do that and that would be admitting that we can't solve our own
problems. Heavens to Betsy.
CBS
A matter of considerable importance...
===========
Mike Royko
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid
=1876&dat=19931027&id=PrceAAAAIBAJ
&sjid=d88EAAAAIBAJ&pg=6625,4906796
Check out the Mike Royko Section
B
===========
Something worth reading...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product
/0812693124/ref=oss_product
Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men is an exciting
narrative history offering fresh insights into many aspects of the Civil
War. "This is a lucid, edifying account of the Civil War era. Mr. Hummel has
an impressive command of the relevant contemporary literature. His
interpretations are thoughtful, often provocative, always well worth
considering, Civil War buffs will want this book on their shelves". --
Kenneth M. Stampp University of California, Berkeley
"Hummel presents some uncomfortable truths for both
sides of the Civil War. For the South, Hummel builds a case that the war was
indeed about slavery. For the North, he shows that a war to preserve the
union was morally bankrupt and that freeing the slaves was the only
justifiable reason for fighting. Yet Hummel demonstrates that even a war for
such a noble cause was probably unnecessary, since slavery was politically
doomed in an independent South. Hummel also illustrates some of the cost of
the war, such as Lincoln g suppression of political opposition, the closing
of dissenting newspapers, and the creation of big government under
Republicans Lincoln, Johnson, and Grant". -- Library Journal
"In this insightful treatment of the Civil War
(addressing the causes, the war itself and Reconstruction), Hummel's text
argues against the thesis that armed confrontation was inevitable. With its
insight)d analysis (not to mention the extensive bibliographical essays that
elaborate each chapter), Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men will supply
both the academic and Civil War buff with an added perspective on the causes
and consequences of the Civil War". -- Publishers Weekly
I enjoyed it and learned from it, at any rate.
Charles Brumbelow
Slavery was certainly a doomed institution, and in
fact the North's insistence on protective tariff in textile weaving
machinery kept the South from industrialization and thus agricultural.
Slavery was expensive: Garrison could and did dismiss his workers at age 40
as insufficiently productive. In the South, finding something for aging
slaves to do was expensive: even in sharecropping times most white had far
more gardeners and house workers than they had any use for and some had more
than they could endure. Slavery in a Christian nation gets increasingly
expensive (see Philomen's Problem). It would not have lasted in the South
into the 1890's and possibly not that long.
As to what would have happened had the United
States become two nations in 1860, many have speculated, but none can know.
I grew up in Tennessee, a Confederate state but on the border; we learned
"Good Old Rebel" as a song in 5th Grade, and learned that one reason the
South, outnumbered, held on for so long was that "We had a cause." I did not
grow up thinking Grant and Sherman were heroes... Had the Confederacy
avoided war, what the effect on the future would be is worth a lot of
discussion, but it's not obvious. Without the US to intervene, WWI would
have ended in a peace of exhaustion before 1918; how that might have
effected the development of Germany and the USSR is not instantly clear.
=============
Lawfare: Terrorist Who Help Plan 9/11 Attacks Ordered
Released
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/299711.php
"A suspected al Qaeda organizer once called "the
highest value detainee" at Guantánamo Bay was ordered released by a federal
judge in an order issued Monday.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi was accused in the 9/11
Commission report of helping recruit Mohammed Atta and other members of the
al Qaeda cell in Hamburg, Germany, that took part in the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks."
Now, was this because of lack of evidence? Not really.
It was because the goal was to gain intelligence on future attacks, not to
build a criminal case. The two goals are pretty much in direct contradiction
in real life. So, do we want to actually do that provide for the common
defense thing, or not? Since I'll be doing that exact task in a few months,
I'd kind of like to know.
Weary of Caesar's leniency toward soldiers of the
Senatorial army, his Legionnaires slaughtered their prisoners after one
battle...
===============
What ever happened to.....
Jerry,
The first Amendment: Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right
of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a
redress of grievances.
From the yesterday's Washington Examiner http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Tea-Party-protesters-refused-entry-into-congressional-buildings-88730582.html
"...Capitol Police recently stopped allowing any of
the peaceful protesters to enter into congressional buildings....to air
their constituent concerns."
Hmmmmm, now what could possibly be wrong with this
picture????
Warm regards,
Larry Cunningham
When Newt was Speaker, the Capitol was the people's
house and you could go into it most any time. There was a metal detector,
but otherwise not much security. But that was then. I think we have lost by
doing as we did.
=============
Subject: The lessons of Canada (and other places)
Jerry,
Paul Krugman also noticed that Canada's financial
system never came close to collapsing during the recent economic crisis. His
interpretation is, of course, a lot different that what was suggested by the
Wall Street Journal. Krugman attributes Canada's stability to much heavier
regulation of the banking system. Banks were not allowed to become
dangerously overleveraged, or to engage in reckless securitization of
mortgages:
----
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/
opinion/01krugman.html?ref=opinion
"In times of crisis, good news is no news. Iceland’s
meltdown made headlines; the remarkable stability of Canada’s banks, not so
much."
First, some background. Over the past decade the
United States and Canada faced the same global environment. Both were
confronted with the same flood of cheap goods and cheap money from Asia.
Economists in both countries cheerfully declared that the era of severe
recessions was over.
But when things fell apart, the consequences were very
different here and there. In the United States, mortgage defaults soared,
some major financial institutions collapsed, and others survived only thanks
to huge government bailouts. In Canada, none of that happened. What did the
Canadians do differently?"
"More specifically, Canada has been much stricter
about limiting banks’ leverage, the extent to which they can rely on
borrowed funds. It has also limited the process of securitization, in which
banks package and resell claims on their loans outstanding — a process that
was supposed to help banks reduce their risk by spreading it, but has turned
out in practice to be a way for banks to make ever-bigger wagers with other
people’s money.
There’s no question that in recent years these
restrictions meant fewer opportunities for bankers to come up with clever
ideas than would have been available if Canada had emulated America’s
deregulatory zeal. But that, it turns out, was all to the good." ----
Curiously,the New York Times just ran a piece
suggesting that a housing bubble might be brewing in Canada:
---- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/20/business/global/20real.html
"Some See a Real Estate Bubble Forming in Canada" ----
It should also be noted that during the early years of
the past decade, the US wasn't the only place where housing bubbles
occurred. In 2005, The Economist did a piece on the "global housing boom"
(you can't get the full story at the Economist; it is subscriber only
content):
----
http://www.markzwick.com/
real_estate/_upload/57355.html
"The worldwide rise in house prices is the biggest
bubble in history. Prepare for the economic pain when it pops
NEVER before have real house prices risen so fast, for
so long, in so many countries. Property markets have been frothing from
America, Britain and Australia to France, Spain and China. Rising property
prices helped to prop up the world economy after the stockmarket bubble
burst in 2000. What if the housing boom now turns to bust?
According to estimates by The Economist, the total
value of residential property in developed economies rose by more than $30
trillion over the past five years, to over $70 trillion, an increase
equivalent to 100% of those countries' combined GDPs. Not only does this
dwarf any previous house-price boom, it is larger than the global
stockmarket bubble in the late 1990s (an increase over five years of 80% of
GDP) or America's stockmarket bubble in the late 1920s (55% of GDP). In
other words, it looks like the biggest bubble in history." ----
Based on that, and other reading I've done, it seems
that housing bubbles occurred around the same time in the following places:
US, Britain, Spain, Ireland, France, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden,
Australia, South Africa, Singapore, and China (yet to burst).
Obviously, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac only operated in
one of those countries.
So maybe there was a lot more behind our housing boom
than just an out-of-control US Government housing agency.
CP, Connecticut
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac injected money into the
market. Their goal was to allow more people to buy houses -- but putting in
more money inevitably raised the prices. Then that was coupled with
encouraging people to buy that which they could not afford, it not only
raised prices but made those prices fragile. The result was predictable and
predicted. I predicted it. Fat lot of good that did.
===============
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