| 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.
=================
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.
==
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.
==============
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.
==================
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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