South Dakota Politics

Fat People Got No Reason

The most popular Gedanken (thought) experiment in contemporary ethics is the Trolley Problem. In the original version, an uncontrolled trolley is headed toward a switched junction. As the switch is set, the train will cross onto a track where five people are working (or are tied to the track) and they will all be killed. You are standing at the switch, and you can divert the trolley. But if you do, a single person on the other track will die. Do you throw the switch or not?

In the second version, you are standing on a bridge next to a fat guy as the trolley approaches from behind. The tubby leans over the rail and exclaims that the trolley is going to kill five people on the track ahead. Give him a little push, and he goes over and stops the train. Do you act?

Most of my students (about 3 or 4 to 1) throw the switch in the first example, but the numbers reverse on the second version. It's a great way to test utilitarian vs. deontological ethics. Is it the outcome that matters, or the moral act that matters? But my students have no trouble recognizing that prejudice against obese people plays a role in the decision making. It's easier to use someone if we don't like him, and, God help us, we find it easy to dislike fat people.

There's a move afoot to push Tubby over the rail in order to save healthcare reform. Daniel Engber has the story at Slate:

In recent days, the health care debate has shifted back to an idea that's been kicking around since Barack Obama first started talking about universal coverage on the campaign trail: Let's stick fatties with the tab. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spoke out (again) this week in favor of a national tax on sugary drinks to fight the obesity epidemic and raise federal revenue. The Los Angeles Times spelled things out: "Tough love for fat people: Tax their food to pay for healthcare."

Those of us who thought that the campaign against tobacco would encourage similar intrusions into the personal lives of each and every person in these United States have their suspicions confirmed. Legislators and public busybodies who presume to decide for us whether we can smoke if we please (not) are now setting out to tell us what to eat and drink.

Of course anti-choice policies on cigarettes and Cheetos run afoul of the sacred idea of, well, choice. One has to argue that lighting up and reaching into the orange bag somehow burdens all the innocent bystanders. Unfortunately there is no such thing as second hand cholesterol, so the anti-obesity lobby has to argue that fat people are bad because they cost all of us a lot of money.

Well, that's easy, isn't it? The jumbo guy who smokes a pack before and after he gobbles up a double quarter-pounder with cheese, large fries, and a jumbo, sugar-laden Coke, is going to be a burden on the healthcare system. So we have to tax his burger, fries, and pop, in order to save this lost soul and fund Obama's healthcare proposals (if he had any proposals). If we could just encourage a lot of cigarette smokers and fat folks to kick the habit, slim down, and hit the gym, we'd have more money to fund health insurance for everyone.

The only thing wrong with this story is that it is false. Better yet, it is obviously false. The burden on the healthcare system is not smoking people or fat people, it is old people. Almost all the dollars spent providing medical care to someone will be spent during his last five or ten years of life. That five or ten years will come to all of us no matter how many push-ups we do or how many fruit smoothies we consume. The cancers that strike a man after eighty years of golf and good living will be just as expensive to treat as the lung cancer that lays low big Joe a few decades earlier.

Actually, healthy people are more expensive. Living longer, they soak up a lot more in social security payments. But don't let common sense and obvious facts be your guide. A Dutch study, published in PLoS Medicine, crunches the numbers.

Although effective obesity prevention leads to a decrease in costs of obesity-related diseases, this decrease is offset by cost increases due to diseases unrelated to obesity in life-years gained. Obesity prevention may be an important and cost-effective way of improving public health, but it is not a cure for increasing health expenditures.

Smoking and obesity don't put a burden on public finances. They save us money, mostly by kicking the bucket sooner. Lest I be accused of wanting people to die and reduce the surplus population, let me say that it is entirely a good idea to encourage people to stop smoking and keep a healthy weight. It makes for a better life, and that ought to be the object of all good policy.

But if reducing obesity is a good idea, it won't reduce healthcare expenditures. It doesn't help the cause of healthcare reform to base our policy on obvious nonsense. And while it is a good idea to encourage everyone to live a healthier life, maybe we shouldn't be so quick to tell people what they ought to order at the drive-through.

Roe v. Wade

Many thanks for letting me come aboard! South Dakota Politics has long been one of my favorite blogs and I am grateful for the chance to be a part of it.

I agree with Dr. Blanchard that Roe v. Wade may have been one of the Supreme Court's most immoral decisions.

I respectfully disagree with his idea that the decision was constitutional. The fifth amendment says that no person shall be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

I would argue, then, that, if the court rules that someone can be deprived of his life or liberty without due process, then it has made a ruling that is inconsistent with the constitution. Roe v. Wade did that.

If we say that Roe v. Wade is constitutional, can we also say that it is constitutional for the court to deprive others of their right to life, liberty or due process?

One could, of course, argue that an unborn baby is not a full person, but then, one could make that argument for someone who did not quite meet other qualifications. Someone, who, for instance, doesn't have blonde hair or blue eyes. But a person doesn't lose his personhood because someone else doesn't wish to recognize it.

Therefore, I think that Roe v. Wade is unconstitutional.

Original Intent & the Constitution

The nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to sit on the Supreme Court has generated a vigorous sidebar discussion among conservatives about the proper way of reading the Constitution. Ramesh Ponnuru, a senior editor at the conservative flagship publication, the National Review, has this:

Many conservatives oppose Judge Sotomayor's nomination because she does not appear to support originalism, the notion that legal texts, including the Constitution, should be interpreted according to the meaning that the informed public assumed them to have when they became law. We argue as well that judges should try to overcome the biases of their backgrounds in the name of self-restraint. But when it comes to the race cases before the Supreme Court, too many conservatives abandon both originalism and judicial restraint.

This strikes me as correct. The Constitution is a contract. It has held intact for more than two hundred years. If it doesn't mean what it meant originally, or as amended according to proper Constitutional form, then it doesn't mean anything.

But how do we determine its original meaning? One way is to look at the documentary record. Antonin Scalia presents a magnificent example of this in the D.C. v. Heller case, and found a constitutional right to possess firearms. I think Scalia's argument was air tight, but that was because in this case the documentary evidence was unambiguous. But what does one do when the documentary evidence is ambiguous, which is usually the case?

A second way to determine the meaning of the Constitution is to look to Constitutional forms. The only unambiguous statement of the Founding Father's original intent is the Constitution itself, and by this I mean not the parchment document, but the regime. Voters, states, the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches, constitute the real Constitution. Whatever that regime does, so long as the basic forms are intact, is constitutional. That, I believe, is what the Constitution is and has always been.

I'd love to tell you that Roe v. Wade was "unconstitutional." It was certainly a very bad decision. It was ungrounded in the text of the Constitution. It created a very controversial right that depends on the whim of five judges to maintain, and thus has politicized the nomination process to an unprecedented degree. It is also, I would add, a moral abomination rivaling that of Dred Scott. But it wasn't unconstitutional. The Court put its own political preferences into basic law by doing nothing more than using the powers that the Constitution gave the Court.

Both liberals and conservatives want to declare that transcendental principles decide each case in their respective favor. For better or worse, the only transcendental principles in the American regime that have any force are those that fix the powers of each office. Of course, the arrangement of powers was designed to serve more important ends: the protection of unalienable rights. But what is constitutionally legitimate, as opposed to what is just simply, is what the constitutional regime does. Maybe we will have to make do with that, as we have hitherto done.

Please Welcome Miranda to SDP

Miranda, a former student of mine and frequent SDP commenter, has agreed to join SDP as a regular blogger.  Assuming she opens her posts to comments, please give her a warm welcome. 

Healthcare & Cost Control 2

It is clear that the President's healthcare reform policy is in trouble. Despite Speaker Pelosi's bold assertions, it's stuck on the Hill, and the President's popularity is sinking faster than the Washington Nationals.

The Washington Post has some clues about why this is so.

PRESIDENT OBAMA sometimes presents health-care reform as a pain-free proposition, as simple as choosing the red pill over the blue -- one that's no more effective but costs twice as much… This all-gain-no-pain stance may be politically advisable; people are increasingly edgy about how reform will affect their own health care… But Mr. Obama's soothing bedside manner masks the reality that getting health costs under control will require making difficult choices about what procedures and medications to cover.

In other words, the President isn't being candid, and pretty much everyone knows it; and what he is not being candid about is worrisome.

My favorite economist, Robert Samuelson, does something in his current column that I have seen no one else do: he explains why extending health insurance coverage to the uninsured will cost so much. That may seem obvious, but it isn't. We hear a lot about how many people are uninsured, but not about how many people are not getting adequate healthcare, or how inadequate it is for how many people. If tales of people denied basic healthcare because of a lack of coverage were available, they would be all over the news.

The health care conundrum involves a contradiction that the administration steadfastly obscures: In the short run -- meaning four to eight years -- government cannot both insure the uninsured and rein in health spending. Here's why. The notion that the uninsured get little or no care is a myth: They now receive about 50 percent to 70 percent of the health care of the insured. If they become insured, their health care would rise toward 100 percent; that would increase both government and private health spending, depending on how the insurance is provided.

So the healthcare legislation would extend more treatments to more people. Whatever the costs, at least the aim looks worthy. But critics of the current system (the President above all) incessantly complain that it costs too much money, and that Americans don't get better healthcare for that money. Well, maybe all those inefficiencies in the American system are to blame for the high costs. But is this in fact the case?

Not according to a front page piece in the Washington Post focuses on treatments for the leading cause of American deaths, heart disease. Here is a key passage:

Although inappropriate care, high administrative costs, inflated prices and fraud all add to the country's gigantic medical bill, the biggest driver of the upward curve of health spending has been the discovery of new and better things to do when someone gets sick.

Get that? The reason American healthcare costs have risen so fast are two: one is that we have a lot more old people. Another is that we coming up with new and more expensive medical technologies very fast. Of course the ones we have are always becoming cheaper. But it doesn't help. New high priced treatments are approved by the day.

The American system is more expensive than that of Europe because we have never learned how to say no. Cost control will require some of that. But the President, for good reason, doesn't want to talk about the real problem. Yet he can't make it go away. This is the root of his current difficulty.

Healthcare & Hysterical Comments

A blogger whom I will not name, since he prefers not to name me when he takes me to task, has this:

Zyklon-B, the gas, has undergone extensive tests on humans, has been found to end all ailments and pathologies, and has the added virtue of killing lice. What goes around comes around, and here it comes again. Although gas ovens have not been proposed as yet, neither has any plan by the opponents of reform for offering health care to those who can't afford it. All the arguments against health care reform are the same arguments used in support of gas ovens as a medical option.

Now this comment strikes me as so morally irresponsible, not to mention stupid and patently false, that I can scarcely believe that an education person made it. The blogger complains frequently about the nastiness of the blogosphere and the viciousness of comments on blogs, but I have seen nothing anywhere that is nastier than this.

I am not quite sure who is arguing against healthcare reform (since the blogger's MO is not to provide links or any other kind of evidence), though a lot of people are certainly arguing against the plans currently before committees in both houses. But it seems as if the blogger has in mind all Republicans, at least.

The Democrats believe that health care is something that should be available to everybody. The Republicans believe you should get health care only if you can afford it.

I think that means, taken together, that all Republicans are Nazis. If I am reading out of context, I beg forgiveness. Readers can examine the link above to see if I am right. Today, much the same comment was made by said blogger.

Some people think that every person should have access to health care, because such thinkers are part of that conspiracy started by a Jew from Nazareth who instructed his followers to feed the poor and heal the sick. Others think that the problems of poverty and illness can be solved if those so afflicted just damned well die.

Of course, logic was never one of said blogger's strengths, so let me help. To be opposed to a particular plan of healthcare reform is not to be opposed to healthcare reform. There are alternatives. One might argue that the current system shouldn't be reformed on the grounds that an incompetent Congress is likely to make it worse. I would not say so, but only an idiot would fail to see the distinction between that argument and an argument "in support of gas ovens."

Likewise, to be opposed to the expansion of government supplied health insurance is not the same as being opposed to universal health insurance. There are other conceivable plans, such as healthcare vouchers and general reform of private insurance. Nor is universal health insurance the same thing as universal healthcare.

If healthcare reform costs a lot of money, and it will, it is no evidence of Nazi tendencies to ask how it is going to be paid for. Maybe this is one of those things worth running a deficit for. But it might occur to someone who is doing genuine thinking that if we are going to borrow, someone has to lend the money. With the Chinese about to shut down the market on American securities, that might not leave anyone else. If you want to extend health insurance coverage or the level of healthcare provided to all Americans, you might want to take such facts into account. That is the sort of thing that sober and civilized people argue about.

Headlines worth Noting

Police are treating the avocado as a fruit of interest

Peach may have been murdered, says ex-Met officer

File under "ill-designed legislation"

Newly wed couple faces 18-month separation under Forced Marriages Act

Not necessarily in that order

Divorce and Viagra blamed for soaring rate of sexually-transmitted diseases in over-45s

Here comes the judge

First 'extreme porn' court case

Obama & Louisgate

File this one under Unforced Error, Major. President Obama gives a press conference to rally support for healthcare reform. It was not, I think, one of his most effective performances. But if he failed to rise to the occasion, I don't think he did any major damage to his cause. Or at least he didn't while he was still talking about healthcare.

But then he gets one last question, this one about the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. arrest, and proceeds to torpedo his own ship. This is my transcript of the New York Times video.

I should say at the outset that Skip Gates is a friend, so I may be a little biased here. I don't know all the facts. What's been reported though, is that the guy forgot his keys, jimmied his way to get into the house. There was a report called into the police station that there might be burglary taking place. So far so good. I mean if I was trying to jigger, well I guess this is my house now, it probably wouldn't happen. But let's say my old house in Chicago, ah, here I'd get shot.

But so far so good, they're reporting, the police are doing what they should, there's a call, they go investigate what happens. My understanding is at that point Professor Gates is already in his house. The police officer comes in. I'm sure there's some exchange of words, but, my understanding is that Professor Gates shows his ID to show that this is his house. At that point he gets arrested for disorderly conduct, charges which are later dropped.

I don't know, not having been there and not having seen all the facts, what role race played in that. But, I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry. Number two, the Cambridge police acted stupidly, in arresting somebody when there's already proof that they're in their own home. And number three, what we know, separate and apart from this incident, is that there is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.

There's a little more that is a very reasonable elaboration of race and law enforcement context.

Now, having admitted that, number one, he was biased, and number two, he didn't have all the facts and wasn't there, the obvious right response was to say that he couldn't comment. Instead, he draws conclusions about the justification for Gate's anger, and the stupidity of the Cambridge policeman's actions. Thus did that last question give rise to Louisgate.

Now Louisgate is all over the news, a great cloud of black ink spewed forth by the octapoid press, obscuring his attempts to defend the healthcare reform effort. So the President was forced to make another public statement "explaining" his earlier words. From Real Clear Politics:

Because this has been ratcheting up -- and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up -- I want to make clear that in my choice of words I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically -- and I could have calibrated those words differently.

It is an irresistible temptation for a politician who has said something he shouldn't have said to claim that he didn't really say it. But the problem wasn't President Obama's choice (or calibration) of words, it was that he unambiguously did malign the arresting officers. Moreover, his judgment was not supported by the facts as he understood them. The Cambridge police were acting correctly to respond to the report and to enter the home and verify Gate's identity. So why would "any of us" be angry about that? And without knowing more about Gate's behavior or "the exchange of words" that Obama acknowledges, how could he know that the arrest was stupid? Apparently the arrest report, written by an Hispanic officer, backs up Sergeant Crowley's actions.  Worse still, when the President says that "the Cambridge police acted stupidly, in arresting somebody when there's already proof that they're in their own home," he is confusing the issue.  Gate's identity is not relevant to the cause of his arrest.

The Gates arrest does say something about the history of race and law enforcement in America. It is true that Black Americans have good reason to be suspicious of their local policemen. It is also true that that fact can be used as an excuse for boorish behavior. It can also lead to poor word calibration by Presidents.

There are some who say that as President I shouldn't have stepped into this at all because it's a local issue. I have to tell you that that part of it I disagree with. The fact that this has become such a big issue I think is indicative of the fact that race is still a troubling aspect of our society.

No. The reason it became such a big issue is that the President of the United States stepped in where he had insufficient information, made unwarranted assumptions, and said something ill advised. It wasn't just George Bush who didn't like to admit it when he was wrong.

Lawyers, Guns, and Federalists

The provision pushed by our own Senator John Thune to expand gun rights was defeated in the Senate. The provision was inserted into a military authorization. It would have required each state to recognize valid gun permits issued to citizens by other states. From the New York Times:

Every state except Illinois and Wisconsin allows concealed weapons, but the statutes concerning who is eligible to carry one vary widely by state. The amendment defeated Wednesday would have allowed gun owners with permits from states with looser restrictions to transport their guns to states with tougher restrictions; it would not have allowed the use of concealed weapons in Illinois and Wisconsin.

The provision gathered 58 votes, two short of the 60 needed for passage. Two Republicans (Richard Lugar and George V. Voinovich) joined 35 Democrats and 2 Independents to block it. It was the first significant defeat for gun rights advocates after a string of victories.

The measure raises interesting questions concerning American Federalism. Each state can make its own laws, but the Full Faith and Credit clause (Art. 4, Sec. 1 of the Constitution) states this, from ePublius:

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.

This is one of the unifying clauses in the Constitution, intended to keep a state from discriminating against the legal rights of persons from other states. There is an argument, separate from issues of gun control, for the gun rights measure. When I drive across state lines, my driver's license will be recognized as valid by the state cop on the other side.

But a too broad interpretation of the Full Faith and Credit clause would clearly undermine the right of states to manage their own internal affairs. This reminds me of the slavery issue in pre-Civil War America. If Free States had been forced to recognize the property rights of slave holders who crossed their borders with their chattel, they would cease to be free states. The possibility of such an interpretation, a super-Dred Scott decision, was, I believe, a significant if silent cause of the national crisis in 1860.

Despite my admiration for Senator Thune, I think he was wrong on this one. The Supreme Court has recognized a constitutional right to possess firearms for self-defense, but it seems to me that states should be allowed to make their own rules for carrying arms about. It has been observed that Republicans are usually defenders of state's rights, but in this case they seem to back federal intrusion into state prerogatives. Again this reminds me of the slavery issue in antebellum America. Southerners were all for state's rights except when it came to the fugitive slave clause. On that issue, they wanted Federal Courts to overrule Free State protections for escaped slaves.

I think each state should be free, within reason, to determine who can carry a concealed weapon about. But I note that this has implications for the Gay Marriage issue. Should a state that does not recognize same sex marriages be required to recognize such a marriage contracted in another state? Maybe state's rights conservatives are contradicting themselves when the back the gun rights measure. But those who voted against the bill will face the same charge if they insist that same sex marriages in one state have to be recognized as valid in other states.

Harry Potter & the Goblet of Health Care

From a quick review of tonight's press conference, the President is offering us healthcare reform that will

1) guarantee coverage for everyone;

2) will improve the quality of the healthcare we receive;

3) will reduce costs for individuals and families; and

4) will help rein in spiraling deficits.

So we are going to get a lot more of a lot better and it will cost us a lot less. Hurray!

But true to form, the President gave us no clues as to how all these circles will actually be squared. Promises and visions do not make up a plan. A plan requires concrete details and strategies and the President never seems to have any of those at hand. It seems clear that Congress is not producing legislation that will control the deficits; it is producing legislation that will add to the deficits in a big way.

This might be the time to step in and provide leadership. If the Congressional leadership won't act responsibly (and it won't) form a coalition with moderate Democrats and Republicans, daring the latter to join him in real healthcare reform. That's how Bill Clinton got NAFTA. But that would require Barack Obama to buck the party line. It would also require him to come up with his own solution to a big problem. There is no precedent in his biography for either thing.

Meanwhile, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a slogan for all us!

America's Affordable Health Choices Act will mean a cap on your costs, but no cap on your benefits. A cap on your costs, no cap on your benefits.

Hip, hip, hurray! Unlimited health care benefits at a limited cost. Since she is speaking to all of us, including me, might I require how high that cap will be? Maybe this like the sorting hat at Hogwarts: put it on and it yells out which tax category you are in.

Let's get real for a moment, just to clean the pallet for the next dessert. We can't possibly control healthcare costs without putting some kind of cap on benefits, can we? A reasonable solution might be to guarantee a certain standard of care for all Americans and allow folks to purchase different plans from private insurance, with additional benefits if they choose. That, as I understand it, is how it's done in France. It would mean that the President can keep his promise, stated over and over (if occasionally taken back altogether) that Americans who wish can keep their current coverage.

But it is pretty clear that "affordable choices" doesn't mean that we get to choose. Investor's Business Daily has this bombshell:

When we received a copy of the House's 1,018-page health care reform legislation, it didn't take us long to find a passage that made us wince. On Page 16, the language indicated to us that once the bill became law, insurers would no longer be permitted to sell new private individual coverage. While we were expecting the worst out of this legislation, we really didn't anticipate anything quite so radical. Had we simply misread the bill?

Not fully trusting our own interpretation, we asked for confirmation from the House Ways and Means Committee. Sources there agreed: The bill would indeed shut down the individual private health care insurance market.

Our impression was further confirmed Monday when Rep. Dave Camp, the ranking member on Ways and Means, told us that "any existing plan will not be able to enroll members." There will be "a prohibition," the Michigan Republican said, "on enrolling individuals in private health plans" after the bill becomes law in 2013.

Apparently, the "public option" ain't gonna be optional. Capice? The President talks a lot about preserving competition, but either he's lying or he doesn't have a clue what's in the bill. Just right now, I can't tell which it is.

The President’s Polls

Americans want to like their President. President Obama has a big advantage on that score, and his personal approval ratings are pretty high. But approval ratings nearly always fall after an election, for governing means making choices that will always disappoint a lot of folks.

President Obama has now crossed the line on disapproval with regard to healthcare. From Gallup:

As the debate over healthcare reform intensifies, the latest USA Today/Gallup poll finds that more Americans disapprove (50%) than approve (44%) of the way U.S. President Barack Obama is handling healthcare policy. There is a tremendous partisan gap in these views, with 74% of Democrats but only 11% of Republicans approving. Independents are more likely to disapprove than to approve of Obama's work on healthcare.

The numbers for independents are, of course, the red meat in this poll. Why the decline in support? Conservatives think that the President is losing support as he "lurches left."

Confidence in his ability to handle health care has plunged from 57 percent to 49 percent, while disapproval has jumped from 29 percent to 44 percent. On the deficit, respondents disapprove by a 49 percent to 43 percent margin.

But I think that the public unease is less a partisan matter than one of common sense. The Democrats look to be in disarray on the healthcare issue, and they look to be pushing legislation the personal benefits and costs of which are uncertain, but the effects on the deficit are all too apparent. The immediate question is competence, not ideology. But ideology is implicated. With the most leftist President yet, and a veto proof majority in Congress, if the Democrats can't pass real reform now…

Who is Opposed to Healthcare? The Children!

This, courtesy of frequent interlocutor, A.I. 

Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children’s Healthcare

Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince

It has been widely observed in advanced reviews that the Harry Potter film series has gotten better as it went along, the opposite of what usually happens with a chain of sequels. I think that is for the most part true. The actors have been better with every film, and the artistry is a little more refined each time. I still think that Prisoner of Azkaban was the best single film over all, but that's largely because I think that it was by far the best of the books. It just had the tightest, best constructed story. Moreover, it had the greatest influence on the subsequent storyline by its introduction or elaboration of the four basic charters, Padfoot, Moony, Wormtail, and Prongs. If you don't already know who those characters are, telling you wouldn't help much.

It has been less noticed that the basic problem of the filmssqueezing a lot of plot and subplots into two and a half hours of filmgot a lot harder after the third book. Everything after Azkaban is big enough to stand on and give a speech. The final book is going to be made into two feature length films. Would that they had had the courage to do that with previous three. So much wonderful stuff and so many fine characters are merely glanced at in these films that I have a hard time imagining that they could be more than half appreciated by someone who hasn't read the books, even if half is a lot.

But within the rules of that game, I think Half-Blood Prince is the best executed of the latter films. The three primary actors, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, have perfected their art and their characters. When Ron (Grint) sits down between Harry and his sister Ginny, and realizes it is an awkward moment, he holds up a plate of pastries with a priceless "how bout those Holyhead Harpies?" look on his face. I continue to be grateful for Michael Gambon's Dumbledore. As for Alan Rickman's Snape (may his name be praised) he couldn't improve if only for the reason that he began the role with a sinister perfection.

The sets become more articulate and elaborate with each film. The cinematography is breathtaking, leaping beyond the standards of Goblet of Fire, which is a high standard indeed. Every rain splashed building, every mist laden landscape, or sun on sodden moor for that matter, unforgettable.

A couple of characters deserve more mention. Jim Broadbent's Horace Slughorn is laid out as well or even better than in the novel. A man carrying a terrible guilt that keeps him from doing good, yet remaining free from the temptation to go over to the other side, that is a man worth watching. Meanwhile if Severus Snape (cue up the choir) doesn't change, anyone who has read the final book knows for sure what I was always convinced of, that… well, no spoilers here. But knowing it puts a new complexion on his dark features.

Half-Blood Prince is a triumph. But it carries with it the sadness that we are nearing the end of this production.

Cap and Trade Charade

It might be possible to fashion a piece of legislation that will significantly reduce global carbon emissions just as it may be possible to build a space craft that will carry human beings to new star systems. But no one alive knows how to do either thing. The laws of physics make the latter very difficult to conceive of. The laws of politics make the former look almost as impossible.

Even if the developed world were to effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to make a difference, that would only result in the shifting of world economic production to places like China and India, and maybe Brazil. It would do no more than slow down the trajectory of modern economic development.

But the developed world is going to do no such thing. The United States may be about to institute a cap and trade policy which, if it works as planned, would make cheap sources of energy expensive and thus encourage the development of green technologies. This has been tried in the European Union on a big scale, and so far it has come a cropper. Technology Review has a fine piece on the European experience in its August 2009 issue. Unfortunately, it is not available online for free, so I had to resort to the crude business of actually buying the magazine. So that you may be spared that indignity, I will sum up the article.

Cap and Trade works by issuing credits to industries for the carbon they emit. In theory, the total number of credits will be low enough to force a reduction of emissions over the total economy. That's the cap part. Virtuous industries that adopt green technologies will have credits left over, which they can sell to firms that, for lack of virtue or some other reason, cannot cover their emissions with their allowance. That's the trade part. The trade system is intended, reasonably enough, to make the system flexible to adjust to economic realities.

What actually happened is that European governments caved in to pressure from their various constituencies (including powerful unions) and issued so many allowances that they exceeded the carbon that was actually produced. No net reduction in greenhouse gases was achieved. That is not to say that the policy did nothing.

Most EU states gave extra allowances to heavy industries such as cement and steel, because they didn't want to threaten the manufacturers' international competitiveness; by the same states gave relatively few allowances to producers of electricity.

The result was a system that favored heavy polluters (if you consider breathing out pollution), but hurt Europe's consumers by raising their electric bill. If the EU couldn't make the system work when economies were generally growing, there is much less chance it will work now that economic growth has stalled.

Congress could, of course, benefit from the example of Europe. What Congress is actually doing looks like exactly the same thing. My grad school buddy Steve Hayward has a piece co-written with Kenneth Green on the Waxman-Markey bill, at the American Enterprise Institute website.

Waxman-Markey is a bundle of contradictions. It seeks to make carbon energy more expensive but does not ask consumers to pay higher energy prices--at least for the first decade of its operation. Hence, Waxman-Markey allocates 85 percent of the emission rights it creates to existing emitters (coal-fired power plants, electric utilities, and manufacturers) for free, rather than auctioning the emissions permits, as President Obama and environmentalists have long advocated. It seeks a first in economic history: rationing without scarcity or price inflation. Thus, Waxman-Markey allows generous "offsets" so that carbon-based energy does not, in fact, become scarce. The bill does, however, contain a multitude of new regulations, product-efficiency mandates, and spending programs that will require extensive managerial attention from both the public and private sectors, though to much less effect than promised.

That sounds better than the European version, at least where consumers are concerned. Otherwise, it looks like the same bag. All the tough parts are pushed into the distant future. All that is achieved in the near term is an expansion of the bureaucracy and a series of market distortions.

If the means look limp, the aims of Waxman-Markey are breathtakingly ambitious. The bill aims to reduce U.S. CO2 emissions from about 6 billion tons (2005) to about 1 billion tons by 2050. The last time the U.S. produced CO2 at such a level was 1910. Since then, the population has more than tripled, and the economy is twenty five times larger. Hayward and Green point out that the Waxman-Markey goals would mean CO2 emissions of 2.4 tons per person in 2050. When did we last belch out carbon at that rate? 1875. To find such rates of emissions today, look to such advanced places as Grenada and Belize.

This is nonsense on green stilts. The aims of the legislation are untethered from reality, and its means have been demonstrated to be ineffective in achieving those ends. Such is one of the signature pieces of legislation in the current Congress.

When Murder Incorporated is the Government

It's a good thing that the left and right in America should argue with passion over such issues as global warming and health care. It is less healthy, perhaps, but to be expected that sometimes the animosities that result from these arguments become more important than the issues that gave rise to them. One corrective might be to consider places where politics means something altogether different.

The current issue of Foreign Policy has a list of the "least free places on earth." It's nice that there is one venue in which North Korea can be competitive. But the really heartbreaking story came from the Russian satrapy known as Chechnya. Anna Nemtsova writes for FP.

Natasha Estemirova was a human rights activist in that dismal place. She dedicated her life to bringing to light the horrors inflicted on the people of Chechnya by the Russians and by the Russian backed government.

Ever since 2000, amidst the horror of the second Chechen war, she worked for the Russian human rights group Memorial. She reported on filtration camps during the war, and abductions and torture of civilians after the war. These were haunting stories she found, of widows in burnt and blackened houses, crying relatives, dead bodies.

And in pursuit of the truth about this suffering, she was relentless; she could make the dead walk if she needed something. People said that about her. It was Estemirova who investigated and documented the witnesses who saw air bombings in the Vedensky region in 2004, where a mother and her children died; at the time the Russian army officials denied the attacks. If not for Estemirova's efforts, the world would have never heard of it. It was Estemirova who discovered a mass grave at a construction site in Grozny and put the city authorities "on their ears," as she said, to do something about the remains.

And it was Estemirova who wrote reports about 50 abducted civilians this year; many locals blamed the disappearances on forces loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov, the region's thuggish young president. "Ramzan hated her. It was him who got rid of her, as only death could stop that woman," Oleg Orlov, Memorial's director, told me the night she was killed.

Americans know gangsters well enough. From Al Capone to the Gangster Crips, we are perfectly capable of producing our own homegrown crop of murderous thugs. Decent life is possible in America because the Crips control a few hoods, during a few hours a day, and the government controls the rest. But imagine a country where the Crips are the government, and they are backed by a super-Capone with nuclear shells in his tommy gun. That would be Chechnya.

Ms. Estemirova was no threat to the regime. Or she wasn't unless you think that telling the truth is a threat, which it is. Anyway, the boss man hater her. He was in a position to do something about her.

On Tuesday, they came for Natasha. At 8:30 that morning, as she walked out of her house, she was dragged into an unmarked white Lada, screaming vainly for help. Just like one of the stories she so doggedly pursued. And of course, we know how this one ends: They found her body later that day, in nearby Ingushetia, riddled with bullets. This, unfortunately, was the Chechnya that she knew all too well, the place of thuggery, violence, and corruption that most of the rest of the world has been content to forget. Just recently Moscow declared that the war there is over. Well, it may not be war, but it remains as lawless as a war zone. Abductions and killings by them are rising.

That should break the heart of everyone who cares about human dignity and liberty. We Americans have an unfortunate habit of exaggerating the defects we perceive in folks across the aisle. The left morphs George W. Bush into Hitler, or imagines that anyone who opposes universal health insurance must be in favor of genocide. The right imagines that Barack Obama is an Al Qaeda operative or an incipient Stalin. Such adolescent hysterics obscure the most important distinctions. Our statesmen are not perfect. They are nothing like Ramzan Kadyrov, let alone Hitler or Stalin. It would do to keep that straight.

Health Care Reform and Cost Control

In my last post I pointed out that the costs of extending insured coverage to almost all Americans is going to be borne by the portion of the population that pays taxes. I note that this is pretty much the same portion that can be relied upon to vote. I also noted that the President is concerned to incentivize that same population to quit smoking and exercise more, which is more concern over our weekly schedules that we are used to from the Federal Government. It's pretty clear that those incentives will not be applied to people who depend on the public plan, since you can't deny health care to people or charge them more when you aren't charging them anything. I am sure they won't apply to Presidents who smoke cigarettes either.

But perhaps the increased tax burden and the invasion of privacy will be worth it if it solves the one problem with the American health care system that is universally acknowledged. Heath care in the U.S. costs too much. We pay for too many tests and too many procedures that are expensive and not worth the expense. Assuming that's true, and I think it probably is, do the bills working their way through Congress do something about it? No.

The President said this, in the Snyderman interview:

I think that the most important thing for people to understand is that the system, as it is, is unsustainable. And if people understand that; if you look at the trend lines, where your premiums have doubled over the last nine years; your out-of-pocket costs have gone up 62 percent; the federal government is being bankrupt by Medicare and Medicaid - if you look at all these things, then you know that, just standing still, we are going to be overrun by health care costs.

So if the present system is unsustainable, then surely an object of reform would be to make it sustainable. But this piece from the Washington Post blows that idea clean out of the water.

Congress's chief budget analyst delivered a devastating assessment yesterday of the health-care proposals drafted by congressional Democrats, fueling an insurrection among fiscal conservatives in the House and pushing negotiators in the Senate to redouble efforts to draw up a new plan that more effectively restrains federal spending.

Under questioning by members of the Senate Budget Committee, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said bills crafted by House leaders and the Senate health committee do not propose "the sort of fundamental changes" necessary to rein in the skyrocketing cost of government health programs, particularly Medicare. On the contrary, Elmendorf said, the measures would pile on an expensive new program to cover the uninsured.

Though President Obama and Democratic leaders have repeatedly pledged to alter the soaring trajectory -- or cost curve -- of federal health spending, the proposals so far would not meet that goal, Elmendorf said, noting, "The curve is being raised." His remarks suggested that rather than averting a looming fiscal crisis, the measures could make the nation's bleak budget outlook even worse.

The one thing we really need to do, make the system more cost effective, is one thing the current reform bills do not do. Instead, they make the problem worse by extending the inefficiencies to cover more people.

That will put further strain on a budget that is already in free fall. But of course it's worse than that. Here is how the Economist puts it:

Rather than finance this large expansion of coverage through savings found within the health system, as Mr. Obama had prudently requested, the Democratic Party's leadership plans to pay for it by imposing an ill-advised tax on business and a steep "surcharge" on the wealthy. Companies with payrolls bigger than $250,000 per year must provide health cover for employees or face a hefty fine. The bill also plans to raise over $500 billion by increasing taxes on those making over $350,000 a year by up to 5.4%.

I doubt very much whether the House plan will really be "revenue neutral." It will add to the deficit. But it will also put new burdens on the businesses that employ most of us and that generate the wealth that has to cover government expenditures. Ratcheting up the costs of government when those costs are skyrocketing, and taking more resources and investment funds out of the productive economy, well that sounds to me like an economic policy.

Congress is, at present, on a track to produce a health care system that is more costly to most taxpayers and more burdensome than the present one on the economy. I wrote very recently that the Democrats were in disarray over health care legislation. I may have been guilty of wishful thinking.

Socialized Medicine

There are signs that the Democrats are really going to pass a health care bill. I remain skeptical, but if they do, I was wrong. I remain more skeptical concerning the design and the effect of the legislation. There are basically three reasons for wanting to reform the system: one is to cut costs; another is to extend care and insurance coverage to people not covered now; the last is to move the United States to a more European/Canadian style system.

I am pretty certain that the first will not be achieved by current legislation. I have doubts that the latter will fly when most tax-paying Americans realize that their health care costs are going to go up and their care options, if anything, will be more restricted. As for the last, I think the Democrats may make a great stride in that direction if they accomplish anything at all.

All the signs are in my favor on this count. Kausfiles notes this exchange from NBC's Dr. Nancy Snyderman and President Obama. The President said:

Snyderman: I haven't heard anyone ask just for the American public to pony up here, that this is going to require some give for all the stakeholders involved. 

Obama:  Well, let me - let me talk about what I think the American people are going to have to do.

First of all, the American people have to recognize that there's no such thing as a free lunch.  Right?  So, we can't just provide care to everybody that has no cost whatsoever, you don't end up having to make any decisions. 

Now that sounds like responsible comment. If we are going to extend care to everybody, somebody is going to have to pay for it. That would be the people who are already paying for everything else. Are they going to go for such a sacrifice, when they realize how much it costs and what little it provides? Maybe they get something out of it, but they have to pay for that too, no? Maybe they should do this, out of charity and other virtues, but it might be a difficult sale when the invoice shows up.

Oh, and the President has this:

So, self-responsibility is going to be critical. This is probably not going to be something that's legislated. But I tell you what, every business out there is going to be looking at their health care bottom line. And increasingly what you're going to see is that businesses are going to incentivize their employees to stop smoking, lose weight, get exercise, get regular checkups.

Okay, so "self-responsibility" means that Obama's program will use business to make sure that we all quit smoking and go on diets and exercise. They "incentivize" good behavior, which means penalizing people who don't get on the treadmill. Maybe Ms. Obama will show up and lay my clothes out for me in the morning. Or maybe we will all be incentivized to dress in identical quasi-military jumpsuits every morning and do Tai Chi in the public squares.

The President was perhaps too candid in letting us know what he is thinking. When he says "self-responsibility" he means government taking a bigger bite out of taxpayer's paychecks and, apparently, a lot more public control (if indirect) over how we live our lives. Maybe we will all be better people for it. But I am thinking that sooner or later this agenda will become apparent to taxpayers and voters, and that it will please some considerable portion of them too well.

Democrats in Disarray

My friend and frequent interlocutor Mac, a fervent Obama fan, takes me to task for never having anything good to say about our President. In fact I do occasionally have something good to say. I defended his speech on Palestine, where other conservatives were writing scathingly about it. But in fact I honestly think that Obama's legislative agenda is a mess.

One of the most respected political analysts, Michael Barone, thinks so too.

Disarray. That's one word to describe the status of the Obama administration's legislative program as Congress heads into its final four weeks of work before the August recess. A watered-down cap-and-trade bill passed the House narrowly last month, but Sen. Barbara Boxer has decided not to bring up her version in the upper chamber until September.

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, who promised a health-care bill last month, still isn't delivering, and neither is the Health Committee's Christopher Dodd. They're both trying to nibble down cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, which has put the price tag at a trillion or more. But their latest ploys -- broad-based tax increases, transferring more of the Medicaid burden to the states -- sound like sputtering.

Meanwhile, Majority Leader Harry Reid says he's taken off the table one approach that has potential bipartisan support -- ending the tax preference for employer-provided insurance.

Let's review. The President pushed for a major stimulus package and got it. So far it has not achieved what he said it would achieve. His other two major legislative proposals, health care reform and cap and trade, are seizing up with major engine sludge. Bear in mind that this is a Congress dominated by the Democrats, and Barone points out that seasoned legislators are in charge. So what's the problem?

On health care, the problem is that the President has not been clear (and perhaps not honest) about what he is trying to achieve. Is he trying to reduce health care costs? If so, then why is his proposal going to cost a trillion dollars? That's an odd way to save money. Or is his purpose to spend more on some folks than we are now spending? That may be a good and just thing to do, but it is at odds with the cost cutting angle. And it may be a very difficult deal to close on, as it means that the most productive and politically active Americans will pay more for less.

Of course, it may be possible to do both things. But that would mean making hard choices that the neither the President nor Congress seems willing to make. Ending the tax preference for employer-provided health insurance is one of those things that makes sense if you really want to fix what's wrong with the American medicine. The Senate majority leader isn't interested. Why not? Because it would threaten too many vested interests.

Meanwhile, the astoundingly deficit spending that is the hallmark of Obama's early tenure is starting to weigh down on everything Washington tries to do. We now have a trillion dollar deficit for the first time in history. Such a thing might make sense if it were a onetime necessity. But similar deficits are projected into the foreseeable future. About a trillion in the hole for every year one of the next ten years. Are you worried yet? You shouldn't be. Those projections are based on optimistic scenarios involving strong growth in coming years.

Here is Jeanne Cummings at Politico:

President Barack Obama's economic forecasts for long-term growth are too optimistic, many economists warn, a miscalculation that would mean budget deficits will be much higher than the administration is now acknowledging.

The White House will be forced to confront the disconnect between its original, upbeat predictions and the mainstream consensus about how the economy is likely to perform in a new budget forecast to be unveiled next month.

If "many economists" are right, the deficits are going to be much larger than projected. It's no wonder, then, that the Democrats in Congress are finding it hard to move and breathe. All the oxygen is being sucked out of the air by the economic singularity that Obama's spending is creating. Already foreign investors, like China, who have in the past funded America's deficit spending, are wondering whether they are buying space on the Titanic. Maybe this is what we should be worrying about. Instead the Democrats are struggling to legislation for which the resources were spent dozens of times over the last year.

So Much for Obama’s Sunshine Promise

A.I. and I have argued in the past about President Obama's honesty. I think our chief executive is no worse, but certainly no better, than your average politician. Telling us what we want to hear is what we pay these guys for, and Barack Obama is earning his keep. Consider this, from the New York Times.

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that once a bill was passed by Congress, the White House would post it online for five days before he signed it.

"When there's a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what's in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government's doing," Mr. Obama said as a candidate, telling voters he would make government more transparent and accountable.

When he took office in January, his team added that in posting nonemergency bills, it would "allow the public to review and comment" before Mr. Obama signed them.

Five months into his administration, Mr. Obama has signed two dozen bills, but he has almost never waited five days. On the recent credit card legislation, which included a controversial measure to allow guns in national parks, he waited just two.

The NYT calls this a "change in the terms of a campaign promise." Good thing they cleared that up, because I sort thought it looked like breaking a promise. I resolve in the future to change the terms of my promises more often. Well, the Administration is about to mend its ways.

Now, in a tacit acknowledgment that the campaign pledge was easier to make than to fulfill, the White House is changing its terms. Instead of starting the five-day clock when Congress passes a bill, administration officials say they intend to start it earlier and post the bills sooner.

"In order to continue providing the American people more transparency in government, once it is clear that a bill will be coming to the president's desk, the White House will post the bill online," said Nick Shapiro, a White House spokesman. "This will give the American people a greater ability to review the bill, often many more than five days before the president signs it into law."

Mr. Shapiro said the move would provide more transparency because the White House site drew so much traffic. It also stretches out the time in which a bill will be posted, making it easier for Mr. Obama to abide by the pledge.

But this is not another way of keeping his promise, it's an absurdity. While a bill is still pending in Congress it can be changed in any number of ways. The Volokh Conspiracy notes this:

The House is preparing to vote on an 1,000-plus-page bill that was subject to a 300-page amendment last night — an amendment that was not even available to many members of Congress until today. Most members of Congress have had no meaningful opportunity to read, let alone digest, the bill. The same is true for most legislative staff. Forget the public.

So posting a bill before it is passed by Congress doesn't give the public a chance to review what is actually legislated. Hundreds or thousands of pages may be added, changing everything. There are only two possible interpretations of the White House back peddling. Either they don't understand how bills become law, or they are covering up a broken promise a carpet of dishonesty. Take your pick.

TVC also notes that Obama's promise to make government more open is another one he has no intention of keeping. From Newsweek:

As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding "secret energy meetings" with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama's "clean coal" policies. One reason: the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged "presidential communications."

The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig's office, is the latest in a series of cases in which Obama officials have opted against public disclosure. Since Obama pledged on his first day in office to usher in a "new era" of openness, "nothing has changed," says David Sobel, a lawyer who litigates FOIA cases. "For a president who said he was going to bring unprecedented transparency to government, you would certainly expect more than the recycling of old Bush secrecy policies."

Now I happen to think that the Administration was quite right to reject the FOIA request. If you want people to come in and talk openly, you might have to give some of them cover. But it bears noting that this is one more case where Barack Obama's campaign rhetoric was just telling us what we want to hear. Sorry Mac, but David Sobel is right. There is not an ounce of difference between Bush and Obama on this issue.

Civil Rights Commission vs. Teacher’s Union

I have thought for a long time that the single greatest obstacle to education reform is the teachers unions. It has seemed clear that given a choice between protecting their membership from any stress and doing what is right for their pupils, the NEA would always choose the former. Well, what do you expect me to say? I am a conservative.

But when the United States Civil Rights Commission endorses my view, that's a sign that the union's contempt for the basic mission of its members has become too grotesque even for its Leftist allies to stomach. Consider this language, from the Commissions recent report: National Teachers Unions and the Struggle Over School Reform.

No Child Left Behind requires that the states ensure that low-income and minority students are taught by qualified teachers at the same rate as other students…But the teacher unions have worked tirelessly against this requirement from the very beginning of the ESEA. Despite their insistence on educational inputs as the key to educational success, the unions repeatedly seek to block one of the most important of these inputs – equitable distribution of highly qualified teachers to high needs schools.

The teachers unions "tirelessly" oppose distributing more qualified teachers equally among low income and minority students. Let them eat cake. And consider this:

The NEA has also publicly opposed efforts to equalize school funding, fearing that comparability would interfere with local contracts. "A gut issue for our members is that they are opposed to something that weakens rights they have under their contract, and it is not the federal role to interfere with that," said Joel Packer, Director of Education Policy and Practice at the NEA.

So: given a choice between equal funding for schools with low income and minority students (compared with higher income, largely White student bodies), and protecting union contracts, the NEA's gut cares only about the latter. Its gut. Wow.

So has the Civil Rights Commission been taken over by conservatives? Not exactly. Among its members are Birch Baye, Bill Bradley, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Roger Wilkins, Father Theodore M. Hesburgh. That's the Left.

The teachers unions are all about teachers. They don't give a rotten apple core for their most needy students.

Greenpeace on Mount Rushmore

Greenpeace, an organization consisting of well fed and very well educated persons who are congenitally opposed to the generation of wealth that pays for food and college, staged a protest at Mount Rushmore. Here is a clip produced, I am supposing, by the insurgents who hung the banner next to Abe's face. Hat tip to my friend and Keloland coconspirator Cory Heidelberger.

Apparently our own Stephanie Herseth denounced the act as "outrageous." I say: well done. I am not a big fan of "civil disobedience" among persons who have every right to peacefully assemble and petition anyone they please for a redress of grievances. But I think that the appropriate response is to prosecute them to the full extent of the law, and then play the YouTube clip at parties.

The clip shows the difficult process of unfurling the banner. I found that engaging in its own right. When finally positioned, the effect was striking. Obama's face added to Mount Rushmore with the slogan: America Honors Leaders, Not Politicians: Stop Global Warming. There is a bit of self-imposed ignorance there. Every face on Mount Rushmore is the face of a politician. And since I live in South Dakota, I am in favor of global warming. But as an act of political theater, it was well staged and elegant, and harmless enough.  

Ps. Since Native Americans generally consider Mount Rushmore to be a violation of their sacred rights, doesn't this make Obama a coconspirator with all those White Presidents?

Healthy Skepticism on Healthcare 4

Kausfiles senses a perilous weakening in the Congressional momentum for health care reform. He refers us to these lines from Jonathan Cohn at the New Republic:

[T]here's reason for concern… On Thursday, as Politico details, the leadership got hit with a flurry of letters from several groups of extremely unhappy members. Some were objecting to the design of the public plan. Some were objecting to proposed tax hikes. Some thought the bill didn't do enough to control costs. Some thought it did too much (although, of course, they didn't quite put it that way).

But lurking behind all of these complaints, according to several sources I consulted Thursday evening, is a general wariness of taking a political plunge on health care. Like their counterparts in the Senate, House members don't like taking hard votes. Raising taxes, cutting spending, anything that takes money ouf of people's pockets--these are not things they want to do, even in the service of a greater, more popular cause.

And now they're getting nervous. They're seeing the president's popularity dipping, however incrementally. They're watching the Senate chase its tail over the same controversies. And having just taken what were--for many of them--similarly tough votes on an energy bill, they're not exactly thrilled about "walking the plank" again.

If Cohn is right, the Democrats are getting cold feet. One of the problems with having a nominal veto-proof majority in the Senate along with control of the House and the White House is that you are pretty much responsible for whatever the government does. If Health Care reform turns out to be deeply unpopular, the Democrats could easily find themselves trading places with Republicans on the is you is or is you ain't the people's baby scale.

There are two big worries here. One is that the Democrats will pass radical health care reform, and it will be very expensive but won't do any good. David Brooks, writing in the New York Times, thinks that's what all the pending plans amount to.

Over the past few decades, health care inflation has exceeded the general rise in prices by about 2.5 percent a year. These inexorably rising costs are bankrupting the nation, walloping businesses and squeezing middle-class salaries.

Fortunately, the country now has an excellent opportunity to change that. We have a president fervently committed to reducing health care inflation. We have a budget director who is perhaps the nation's leading expert on the issue. We have a fiscal crisis staring us in the face, just to focus the mind.

And what is the result so far? Failure. Overwhelming, amazing failure.

The health care bills now winding their way through Congress would cover many of the uninsured. They would pay for most of the costs associated with that expanded coverage. But they would do little to change the fundamental incentives that drive health care inflation.

If confidence in this reform agenda is fading, it's largely because the people at large are getting very worried about the expansive government/massive deficit dimensions of the whole Obama package.

But Brooks point is that, despite President Obama's focus on the health care cost issue, none of the plans addresses the real cause of health care inflation. Critics of the American system incessantly point out that American spends a lot more on medicine than any comparable nation. That is the problem to be solved. If it were solved, there would be plenty of money left over to cover the uninsured and get basic health care to everyone. So why do we spend so much more money than we apparently need to spend?

The answer is that Doctors recommend more tests and more treatments than make sense in any cost/benefit analysis. Why do they do that? Part of the reason is the tort law system. If a doctor doesn't order a test or treatment, and the patient loses an elbow or kicks the bucket, she risks a massive lawsuit. But that's only part of the reason. More tests and treatments equal more money for doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, lab rats, and so on. So any cost effective reform of the system will run against the interests of the tort lawyers (a major Democratic interest group) and pretty much the entire medical industry.

But those obstacles, potent though they are, aren't the real obstacle to reform. The real obstacle is Denzel Washington. I didn't see John Q, the film in which Washington plays a father who takes an emergency room hostage because his insurance company won't pay for a transplant for his ailing son. The movie's premise, as I understand it, was pure fantasy. What is pure reality is this: we Americans consistently demand the best health care possible for ourselves and our loved ones, beyond any rational cost/benefit calculations. Our system provides a lot more of that than any comparable system. We are the problem.

Ask yourself this: what if a treatment costs $250,000 and saves the life of one of four persons suffering from a specific disease? That's a million dollars per life saved, and a 25% success rate. Suppose 1,000 people suffer from that disease. That's two hundred and fifty million that can't be spent on education, highways, or homeland security, to save 250 people. Anyone who says we shouldn't spend it will be asked what a human life is worth.

European state-sponsored health care systems are a mixed bag. Some are pretty good; others, not. In terms of survival rates, the United States ranks very high on some measures (cancer survival rates are better than any European system), and in the middle on others. But the European systems are better at cutting people off. You just can't have this bypass operation because you're too old, sorry. We aren't very good at that, and that is why our system is so much more expensive.

Advocates of reform like to imagine that more treatment will be extended to people who now are denied it. This is fantasy. Any real reform of the system will mean denying treatment to people for whom that treatment is the only hope. Is the Democratic Congress courageous enough to do that? Not if current legislative proposals are any indication. The cause of healthcare reform looks hopeless.

Genomics 3: Endogenous Clocks & Marathon Mice

Okay there's this gene. Actually there are a number of genes that do the same thing, but the point here is that one seems to be enough. I'll just talk about mPer1, as if I knew what I was talking about. Per, by the way, is short for period. Look at mPer1 when a couple of yellow circles are sitting on top of the promoter segment of the gene labeled C and B. These are inhibitors, and they shut the gene down. When the gene is shut down, changes in the cell eventually result in the inhibitors being stripped off. The gene is activated and begins to change the cell chemistry again. Eventually C and B show up again and bind to the promoter, and the gene is shut down.

Get all that? The whole cycle takes a little more than twenty four hours. That's why it's called a circadian clock. In mammals, these Timex cells are the heart of the suprachiasmatic nuclei, a paired set of nuclei located at the base of the hypothalamus, a brain organ found in most mammals but not in Professor Schaff. The SCN is the central pacemaker for circadian rhythms. It allows mammals to keep a twenty four hour cycle. But it is sensitive to environmental inputs such as daylight cycles. The slightly longer than 24 hour period allows the system to adjust to changes in seasons or sudden changes in location. When a creature with one of these time pieces is kept in long term darkness, it keeps a more than 24 hour day.

This is a case where the gene mechanics can be connected well with the associated behavior. It is also a case where the common ancestry of the species is indicated. When the SNC is disabled in a lab rat, it loses the ability to keep a regular schedule. When the same mechanism is disrupted in fruit flies, you get a very irregular drosophila. But, and here is the punch line, they have transplanted genes from the mammalian SNC into the damaged fruit fly, and the fly is back on the clock.

That's what I got from Martha U. Gillette, a marvelous scientist who spends her time watching other critters keep theirs. Justin Rhodes, a biologist here explained how he and others bred a few lines of super buff mice. They kept several lines of control groups (just let them breed), and bred several lines of really strong wheel runners by selecting the strongest. Some of these mice could do many miles a day on those goofy wheels. By breeding several lines instead of just one, Rhodes and his colleagues could tell what changes in what morphological features and genes were constant across the enhanced lines. That clued them into the changes that were really important and not just random noise.

This is science, and I am entranced by it. This is what we are, at least in part. That, at least in part, is what I have always wanted to know.

DISCLAIMER: This is my very amateur take on all this.  Any mistakes are mine and not those of the expert presenters. 

California Screamin’

Many years ago my car broke down in the Middle of the San Joaquin desert, err, I mean Valley. I had to have the car towed to a really lonely town, Avenal, one of the bleakest places I have ever visited. I thought I had landed in some dreary film noir. But I ran into three sets of people from my hometown of Jonesboro, Arkansas.

That was the story of California told in what amounted to the demographic version of an archeological artifact: California was once a Mecca for meek, a Beverley for Hillbillies from all other places. Now the meek are abandoning ship and returning whence they came as fast as possible. The state economy works about as well as my dreadful Dodge Omni, and the state government has seized up the way the Omni's transmission did on that highway to Hell. Governor Arnode is paying the state's bills with $3.3 billion in IOU's, and there seems to be no prospect of a break in the budget impasse. The state is $26 billion dollars in the red.

This hasn't happened over night. Manufacturing jobs have been leaving Hollywood land for real places like Arizona for years. Joel Kotkin, at Forbes, has a list of the parties responsible for California's disaster. In order: Governor Schwarzenegger, the public sector, the environmental lobby, the business community, and the people of California.

To flesh out a few of these, the Governor failed to lay out a program of reform when one was needed, and simply switched strategies and personalities with every defeat just like the actor he is. To be fair, he had little power to institute any real reform. But that doesn't let him off the hook. The enormously bloated public employee sector doesn't give a rat's ass what happens to the rest of the state as long as their benefits aren't cut. The environmental lobby has made doing business if California ridiculously expensive. The business sector has laid low, and the voters want all the benefits they can get without paying for any of them. The result has been that spending increased 31% from 2003 to 2007, while the population increased only 5%.

That public spending is the thing. Most of the blame has been laid at the feet of Prop. 13, which limited property tax increases back in the 1970s. Kotkin points out Prop. 13 kept a lot of people in their houses at a time when property taxes were soaring along with state revenues. I think it was a bad idea and greatly contributed to the dysfunction that afflicts the state. But it had no effect on California's current crisis. If Sacramento had had more revenue to spend, it would simply have spent more revenue. Having one of the highest tax rates in the country isn't helping now, it is driving out people and industries.

All of this would be merely curious to people west of Blythe, were it not for the fact that the President of the United States seems bent on turning America into a large scale model of California. As the economy stalls, and unemployment climbs like Kudzu in Arkansas, the President is spending trillions, and planning on spending tens of trillions more, that we don't have and have no prospect of producing. Meanwhile he wants to put a California-like environmental policy into effect, and wants a trillion dollar health care plan enacted. What no one seems to be asking (no Democrats, at least) is whether there is any realistic prospect that future economic growth can cover this kind of spending. California here we come.

Sociogenomics 2: Why You Can’t Clone a Calico Cat

There's a country music song in there somewhere. Calico cats are white with red and black patches. Apparently some couple with more money than sense paid to have their dear departed calico cloned. But several attempts failed to produce a cat that looked like Furball, or whatever they called the deceased. Instead they bought, for thousands, cats that were all one color or another. Someone might have bothered to tell them that what they were trying to do was destined to fail.

Calicos are all females, and their hair color is determined by a gene on the X chromosome. But here is the cool thing: the chromosome contains two complete sets of genes, one from each parent. In order for that to add up to a functioning cat, one set has to be turned off in each cell. This happens in patches, hence the tortoise shell color pattern. Now when they went to clone Furball, they took just one cell and used the nucleus to launch FB2. But in that one cell, only one set of genes was turned on, and that was fixed for the whole new cat.

I haven't had so much fun since grandma caught her x chromosome in the ringer. Here is the scoop: we understand how genes work. They are molecules, and we know how they code for RNA and how proteins are built form that. We have a pretty good idea about the factors that determine which genes are expressed, and it is clear that the environment can affect that process. I know a whole lot more about exons (sections of DNA that code for proteins), introns (sections of DNA that have to be edited out, but may play a role in expression), promoters (sections that call for a polymerase gene reader, than I did yesterday.

We also know that genes are responsible for all sorts of wonderful and terrible things that happen in development. But while mapping the genome has made it a lot easier to find a gene, it hasn't made it easier to determine how the gene actually produces an effect on the phenotype (the actual organism).

It is pretty certain that there is such a thing as general intelligence, or G. Sorry for all of you who think there are all sorts of Gs out there, and that everyone has at least one of them. A condition known as Fragile X syndrome produces a child (almost always a boy) with low IQ and low tolerance for stress. The gene has a long repeat of a three letter DNA sequence, and this shuts the gene down a lot before it can bond with RNA. The result is a bunch of fuzzy dendrites (part of the neurons that make the brain work). That doesn't mean we have "the gene" for general intelligence; it does mean we have a gene necessary for a well functioning brain and can tie it tight to a specific disorder.

Another genetic disorder was discovered that resulted in a pronounced tendency toward violence in one Dutch family.

Hans Brunner, a geneticist at the University Hospital in Nijmegen, has found that the violent male members of the Dutch family mentioned earlier in this paper, lacked a gene that produces monoamine oxidase-a (MAOA) (4). MAOA is an enzyme that breaks down significant transmitters in the brain. If the MAOA does not break down these transmitters - specifically, serotonin - then buildup of serotonin will occur and could cause a person to act violently (3).

So far, no studies have found such a link outside that one family. In this case, like the former, what made a determination of genetic causation possible was that a single gene was the culprit. But it seems very certain that more complicated arrays of genes and gene expression factors will turn out to play a significant role in a lot of good and bad behaviors. This doesn't mean genetic determinism. How genes are expressed is greatly affected by the environment, and the environment can be controlled, to some extent, by deliberate action. But to deliberate properly, we need to know more about the mechanics of DNA.

All human thoughts and actions happen because the brain works the way it does. It works that way in large part because of the extraordinarily complex structure of the human genome. We are getting a few peaks into that subterranean architecture right now.

Sociogenomics 1

I was one of a number of scholars lucky enough to be invited to the Illinois Politics and Biology Summer Institute, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The Directors include Ira Carmen, a political scientist who writes extensively on genetics and politics, and Gene Robinson, a biologist who spends his time working on links between the genes and social behaviors of honey bees. The Institute is meeting at the Institute for Genomic Biology on the campus of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

The pace is pretty brutal for this kind of thing: eight solid hours a day of presentation and discussion. Most of the NSF fellows are youngsters by my standard: working on their Ph.D.s, or just finished. I am learning to settle in as the designated old fart.

Today we covered the history of the American Political Science Association, founded in 1903 by, well, a bunch of Darwinists. But the APSA quickly ran away from biology following the historicist trend of the times. According to this latter perspective, human behavior and institutions were to be viewed as "socially constructed", that is, as if human beings constructed their institutions entirely apart from the natural world and its influences.

There were some good reasons for this. In 1903 there just wasn't enough known about biology, genetics, or evolution to usefully guide the social sciences. When such knowledge did begin to become available, there was enormous resistance on the part of most political scientists. For one thing, they didn't want to have to learn any real science. For another, there was fear that biological explanations would limit social progress and support regressive political ideas.

The coining of the phrase "Sociogenomics" (even the word genomics is rather new), indicates that the pendulum is finally swinging back toward nature as the foundation of a real political science.

The second topic we focused on today, and the one that was deeply fascinating to me, is the shift in the view of genes and how they operate. Many of those who fear genetic explanations of human behavior have the idea that genes are fixed influences, so that if a gene codes for some kind of behavior, then a person or organism that has one version will act one way and a person or organism that has another version will act another way. This view is sometimes called genetic determinism.

But it is not how genes work. Genes are composed of DNA and code directly for MRNA (which is now pronounced emarenay, I have learned). MRNA (messenger RNA) is used by cells to produce the proteins that in turn influence the structure and behavior and pretty much everything else that characterizes a living being.

Now here is the really cool thing: while DNA is fixed (except when changed by mutation), the expression of the genes in different Messenger RNA messages is flexible. The way the Chromatin wraps around itself determines how the genes will be expressed in the fully realized organism. That in turn can be influenced by the environment.

For example: adult honey bees ordinarily begin their careers as nurses, working to tend the larvae. After a few weeks the nurse graduates to the forager/soldier. It begins its self-guided education by taking a few test flights from the hive, orienting itself with respect to the sun and the location of its home. Once it begins foraging in earnest, it will know how to return to the hive and indicate the location of flowers by doing a very expressive dance.

But sometimes the hive will lose many or most of its forgers when the environment turns against them. The forager secret a pheromone that alerts the nurse/workers to their presence and gives the latter a sense of how many foragers are coming in and out. When the pheromone concentration in the hive drops below a certain level, the expression of the foraging genes in the nurses changes and they become "precocious foragers" switching to the new role in the first week of their adulthood. Same genes. Different time table.

Likewise, when mother mouse licks her young, this maternal care alters genes that give the young a lifelong resistance to stress, and helps trigger maternal instincts in the females. Again, the same genes are expressed in different brain structures and behavior. That is so cool. Genetic influence is not genetic determinism.

Now, if I get this right, the genes that are under review in these examples exist as orthologs in human beings. An orthologs is a gene that exists in similar form in two species and that was inherited from a common ancestor. Some genes have been conserved with very little change over long stretches of evolutionary history.

One of the themes of this institute is that we are beginning to correlate genes with behavior patterns in human beings. More on that tomorrow, I think. Of course, what we don't know and won't know for a while dwarfs what we do know. It may be possible to correlate this gene here with that behavior over there, but we know very little about the chain of causation that connects the one to the other. What we are learning is that genes do not cause behavior, let alone passions and experience. Rather, gene expression exists in a dynamic relationship with human structure, experience, and behavior, as is the case with other creatures. I think this is the greatest show on earth.

Palin

I was never convinced that Sarah Palin was presidential material.  I thought McCain's choice of a running mate was a gamble at a time when a gamble seemed in order.  She certainly shook the race up.  But she wasn't ready for the big show.

Her surprise resignation is another big gamble, assuming that she really intends to run in 2012.  It runs the serious risk of making her look seriously deranged.  It's hard not to think that that wrecks her chances.  On the other hand, it will give her the chance to do two things she desperately needs to do: spend a lot of time raising money for Republicans, and go back to school.  If she shows back up on the national stage in 2011 and is more sure of herself, able to handle questions about a wide range of national issues, and has command of her image, then she will be back in contention.  Otherwise, she Quayles. 

Happy 4th and Light Blogging Ahead

I am on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus this week, learning about sociogenomics.  If you don't know what that is, neither did I until I was invited to participate in this National Science Foundation funded Summer Institute.  Now I know something about it, having spent the day reading the preliminary material.  Wow is this interesting stuff.  I might do some daily blogging if I have the time. 

Meanwhile, happy Fourth of July.  This evening, as I walked around the campus, I noticed a building with a lot of Lincoln's words etched into the side.  "A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand," and "Let Us Have Faith that Right Makes Might."  The campus was founded right after the Civil War, if I got the drift.  Happy Birthday United States of America!

I notice a lot of comments on my Honduras post.  I will try to get around to responding.  If I am slow, it isn't because I don't appreciate the traffic. 

The Honduran Crisis

The odd thing about the military coup in Honduras is that it wasn't a coup. A coup d'état means the removal of a government by hostile forces. The Honduran military this week woke up President Zelaya and packed him off, in his pajamas, to Costa Rica. But it left intact the Honduran Supreme Court, which apparently authorized the action, and the nation's congress. It installed congressional leader Roberto Micheletti as Zelaya's successor (according to the Constitution) until the end of Mr. Zelaya's term in January. That's not what a military coup looks like.

That's not to say that the action was right. President Obama, who can't decide what side he's on with respect to Iran, quickly condemned the action and rightfully mentioned the sorry spectacle of military coups in Latin America. Standing by his side as he did so was Colombian president Alvaro Uribe [Houston Chronicle], whose opinions on these matters I take more seriously than Obama's. If Uribe, who surely has to worry about such things, thinks this ought to be opposed, then I am hesitant to say the contrary.

But to judge well, you'd have to the conduct of President Zelaya that led to the coup. This from Glenn Garvin at the Miami Herald:

For weeks, Zelaya -- an erratic leftist who styles himself after his good pal Hugo Chávez of Venezuela -- has been engaged in a naked and illegal power grab, trying to rewrite the Honduran constitution to allow him to run for reelection in November.

First Zelaya scheduled a national vote on a constitutional convention. After the Honduran supreme court ruled that only the country's congress could call such an election, Zelaya ordered the army to help him stage it anyway. (It would be ''non-binding,'' he said.) When the head of the armed forces, acting on orders from the supreme court, refused, Zelaya fired him, then led a mob to break into a military base where the ballots were stored.

His actions have been repudiated by the country's supreme court, its congress, its attorney-general, its chief human-rights advocate, all its major churches, its main business association, his own political party (which recently began debating an inquiry into Zelaya's sanity) and most Hondurans: Recent polls have shown his approval rating down below 30 percent.

Now if this is right, then Zelaya's unconstitutional actions that precipitated the crisis. He put the Honduran military in a position where it had to choose between abetting his lawless power grab, or obeying the Supreme Court and taking the action that it did.

But were these really the only choices? Edward Schumacher-Matos, writing in the Washington Post, has perhaps the best thing I have seen on this.

It is now clear that if the Honduran Supreme Court or Congress had used legal means such as impeachment before asking the army to remove President Manuel Zelaya, we would be calling events there a constitutional crisis rather than a coup d'etat.

Well, yes. And everyone, except perhaps Manuel Zelaya and Hugo Chavez (and the Castros) would be happier. Schumacher-Matos points out that many of those who are shocked, shocked by this undemocratic action would favor full recognition of the Castro regime, which is about as democratic as Sauron's Mordor.

He goes on to point out that

The threat growing in Latin America, Asia and Africa, according to Freedom House, is not dictatorship but what political theorists call illiberal democracy. Venezuela is the poster case in which a president, Hugo Chávez, is democratically elected and then goes about, through democratic referendums and Congress, constraining freedom by changing laws and institutions. Chávez and others like him create the "tyranny of the majority" that theorists behind the American Constitution warned was the weakness of democracy by itself, without constitutional liberalism protecting the rights of the individual.

That is what the crisis in Honduras represents. Let's hope our President is reading Schumacher-Matos, and not just the rest of the mainstream press that seems more interested in righteous indignation than in information.

The Cost of Cap & Trade

My friend and esteemed Keloland colleague, Cory Heidelberger, has a post worth reading on the Waxman-Markey bill. Here is a gem:

On the costs of cap and trade: How big a pocketbook bite would SHS have had to sell to us to justify a yes vote on ACESA? According to the Truth-o-Meter folks at Politifact.com, the Congressional Budget Office estimates this specific bill would cost $175 per household... a little more than one postage stamp a day.

Well, that sounds manageable. Of course there is a logical problem. The bill is supposed to force everyone from Wal-Mart down to the guy with the shifty eyes in the one bedroom apartment to go green. Is one postage stamp a day really going to do that?

But leave that alone for a moment. Cory thinks that the bill will be cheap. What does Barack Obama think? Here is Jeff Jacoby writing for the Boston Globe:

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in January 2008, [Obama] calmly explained how cap-and-trade - the carbon-dioxide rationing scheme that is at the heart of Waxman-Markey - would work:

"Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket . . . because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, natural gas, you name it . . . Whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money, and they will pass that [cost] on to consumers.''

In the same interview, Obama suggested that his energy policy would require the ruin of the coal industry. "If somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant, they can,'' he told the Chronicle. "It's just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.''

Okay. President Obama wants electricity rates to "skyrocket." He wants to ruin the coal industry, from which we get about 23% of our energy. And all this is going to cost us a postage stamp a day? The thing is, I think Cory might be right. If Waxman-Markey passes, and does what the President wants it to do, a single postage stamp might really cost more than any American can afford.

update: this post was mentioned favorably at one of my favorite sites: No Left Turns. Thanks to Peter Lawler.  

The Anti-Science Obama Administration

For a couple of years I was a participant in a national online meeting on open government.  All over the country groups convened and logged into the national meeting, and we watched a video and listened to a panel of national figures discuss the subject.  Then our local panel discussed before a small audience.  The first year it was quite good.   But the second year the event got hijacked by global warming zealots, including NPR Science Friday host Ira Flatow. 

The theme of that second annual meeting was that the Bush Administration was anti-science because it suppressed the truth about global warming.  The evidence of this was that the Administration didn’t sufficiently publicize the views of individuals working for the various branches of government who thought that global warming was a serious threat.  That theme, that the Bush Administration was anti-science, became a major meme in left wing discourse. 

Well now the executive show is on the other foot, and guess what?  The Obama Administration is doing the exact same thing.  From CBSNews:

Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty "decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data."

Why was the report “quashed”?  An EPA center director, Al McGartland, wrote this in an e-mail to the author of the skeptical report, Alan Carlin. 

“The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for
this round. The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. …. I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.”

Well, there you have it.  Arguments and information that do not “help the legal or policy case” the Administration wants to make will be suppressed.  It is likely that the suppression of this report is a violation of administrative law.  When a Federal Agency is preparing a finding, it is supposed to make available “the evidence relied upon and the evidence discarded.” 

But the legal point is not the important point here.  I think the Administration has every right to make up its mind on this matter, and present its policy preferences.  But so did the Bush Administration.  If in doing so Bush was anti-science, then so is Obama.  This is one more example of the Obama Administration working to rehabilitate Bush’s legacy.  Imitation may not be the sincerest form of flattery, but it is flattery.