I am constantly surprised, when talking to policy makers, how rarely they ask the question “then what happens?” when developing their policy. Imagine you need a source of revenue, but you don’t want to burden the taxpayer. A surprisingly large number of policy makers “solve” this dilemma by suggesting a tax on business, say oil companies. But lets ask “then what happens?” The business isn’t going to just take the loss. It will raise prices to pull in additional revenue in order to pay the tax. Where does the revenue from the business come from? The consumer, i.e. anybody who uses gasoline, i.e. anybody who drives or uses public transit, or uses products that are transported in a gasoline powered vehicle, i.e. the taxpayer.
Read the rest of this entry »

I have no idea why 10 Americans, in Haiti on a humanitarian mission, thought it would be a good idea to take 33 Haitian kids to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. No one that I have seen has suggested that they were paid or had any insidious motive. My guess is that they were trying to help, but doing so in a naive and arrogant way.

With that in mind, a few thoughts:
Read the rest of this entry »

So, today Pelosi came out against the notion of piecemeal reform for the health care system. She claims that making slight adjustments to the law won’t do anything, because the system is so complex. This is a failure of creativity on her part.
Read the rest of this entry »

It is rare in politics these days that I see something I consider a truly and innovative solution to a problem. I appreciate out of the box thinking, so I like to highlight them when I see them.

The current focus of my innovation watch is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent proposal to outsource prisons to Mexico. Cost of living is much higher in California than across the border, which means the state of California could save a lot of money annually if they send inmates to Mexico rather than housing them in state. There are strengths and weaknesses to this proposal, and I thought I’d talk briefly about them.
Read the rest of this entry »

The state of Massachusetts recently did a tremendous favor to the entire country. It comes down to this - in order for the government to make effective policy, multiple perspectives need to be considered. The fact that the democrats now need to listen to concerns of the conservatives in order to pass legislation is an immensely positive thing. I didn’t like it when the GOP tried to run roughshod over the liberals, and I don’t like it any more when it happens in the other direction. Already, we’re seeing the fruits of this and its only been one day. The AP reports:

“No decisions have been made, lawmakers said, but they laid out a new approach that could still include these provisions: limiting the ability of insurance companies to deny coverage to people with medical problems, allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ policies, helping small businesses and low-income people pay premiums and changing Medicare to encourage payment for quality care instead of sheer volume of services.”

In other words, all the things that everybody likes about the plan, and none of the things that made the health care debate so anger inducing. The new plan will be sleeker, less expensive, and probably more effective. All because the democrats can’t bully their political agenda through. So, thanks to Massachusetts, for looking past your liberal leaning ways, and voting for the good of the country.

I was just about to eat a candy bar, when I glanced at the nutritional information. It had 1.5 times the daily recommended caloric intake. That is, its a day and a half worth of food, and I was going to eat it for an afternoon snack! No wonder Americans have such obesity problems. In deference to my wasteline, I only ate half the candy bar. I’ll have the other half some other day…

I read an interesting article today about a fight over what goes in history standards for the state of Texas. Should students be taught about the personalities and religious beliefs of historical figures, or only the accomplishments of historical figures? Should the curriculum include specific modules on the contributions of various minority groups, or should history be taught in as race blind a manner as possible? What about history of environmentalism, should that be included at all?

I found the issues fascinating. Both what should be in the core curriculum, and also who should get to decide. My “totally unbiased” conclusion is that college faculty should be the ones who set the standards… after all, we’re the ones who know what knowledge is necessary to be ready for college level courses, and (at least historians) are experts on the area in a way that general bureaucrats aren’t. But my mind is still open to persuasion as to how these issues should be handled…

I found it humorous that while many the founding fathers were deist, and how several people instrumental to the development of our country wrote treatises specifically against Christianity, there are folks who want to add a “U.S. was founded as a Christian nation” to the curriculum. Goes to show how what information goes into a history class can have a big influence on what people know and the way they think about issues in this country…

Eight years ago, Barack Obama was an Illinois state legislator. Eight years before he became president, George W. Bush was considered a spoiled, unlucky businessman trying to unseat a well-entrenched governor. Eight years before he became president, Bill Clinton was trying to regain the job of Arkansas governor that he had lost two years earlier. Eight years before Ronald Reagan became president he was finishing up his second, and final term as governor of California and getting ready to retire from politics, at least for the time. And eight years before he became president, Jimmy Carter was a state senator trying to cobble together support for the upcoming governor’s election.

The lesson? Except for those who manage to succeed in moving from Vice President to President (George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, LBJ, Harry Truman, etc.) US presidents tend to come out of relative obscurity.

I couldn’t help but think of this as I read a Washington Post op-ed complaining that “Despite our assumption that a female president is inevitable, and likely soonish, it’s surprisingly difficult to come up with a name.” Read the rest of this entry »

So I am oddly fascinated by this week’s media frenzy over Harry Reid’s use of the word “negro”.

The Washington Post summarized the contents of the book “Game Change” as follows:

The authors describe Reid assessing Obama’s strengths as a candidate. Reid, they write, “believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,’ as he said privately. Reid was convinced, in fact, that Obama’s race would help him more than hurt him in a bid for the Democratic nomination.”

I thought this was fascinating especially since the Census bureau announced it is including “negro” (as in “black or African-American or …” ) on the 2010 census forms because 50 thousand, usually older, people hand wrote it on the 2000 census. But this too has caused outrage. (This article has a nice summary and claims that the bureau is reevaluating its decision. Census to Drop ‘Negro’ After Backlash. Google has lots of other similar articles.)

Also, Washington Post has two nice opinion pieces about Reid’s comments:
Harry Reid’s comments were crudely put, yet true

Underground bigotry

Anyways. I was surprised that the use of the word “negro” had gotten Reid into so much trouble. Painfully old fashioned, sure, but so is he and more to the point so are the people who self-identified as negro on the 2000 census. In fact, in my parents’ lifetimes negro was the polite term that you would see in respectable publications. I’d have thought it was the content of his comment that would be more likely to offend.

I saw a fascinating analysis of cigarette smoking today:

“Imagine that cigarettes were harmless — except, once in every 25,000 packs, an occasional innocent looking one is filled with dynamite instead of tobacco” — Myers, 2007

What you have there is the same death rate as cigarettes actually cause. If one of every 25,000 cigarette packs blew somebody’s head up, cigarettes would be illegal within a month. Let’s compare relative risk - there are approximately 30,000 flights per day, averaging about 100 people. So, 300,000 people fly per day. It has been 9 years since a successful terrorist attack. Do I need to do the math? And we’re still going nuts over airport security. If the government really wants to save lives, they should be holding hearings on cigarettes, not airplane security.

But sadly, cigarettes don’t cause people’s heads to explode, they kill subtly. While terrorists kill in dramatic fashion. So which is more important: drama or lives? Just something to think about when listening to people establishing domestic priorities…