Interesting stories today:

Now that the federal government owns 61 percent of General Motors the automaker plans to introduce a ‘public option’ vehicle as part of a sweeping plan to provide new cars for some 46 million Americans who lack proper transportation.

So real you'd think it's real. And yet that's the direction of the new health plan...

Here's a short paragraph out of a good article. Read the whole thing.

During the auto bailout hearings a majority of voters called, e-mailed, wrote, and expressed concern about this auto bailout, and then were ignored by the Congress that gave out bailout money anyway. The same thing happened during the stimulus/recovery/spending package that was passed. A majority of American’s voiced concern, but Congress passed this bill with over 8000 pork attachments. During the debate on these issues we were told that GM and Chrysler were to big to let them go bankrupt, we gave them “billions” and they went bankrupt anyway. We were told that a stimulus/recovery/spending package had to be passed immediately to control unemployment and stimulate the economy, it hasn’t happened.

Keep in mind this guy is an independent. Not a partisan.

Unintentionally, sadly. The reporter evidently doesn't know why Why Barack Obama represents American Catholics better than the pope does. is a funny headline: for her, it's simply true that the pope doesn't toe the line like he should. She would be outraged if she were confronted with the logical consequences of her own positions. I will pray that she is spared them.

I see that the FTC has decided that you, my reader, are an uninformed moron who can't possibly decide between things without even more information.

So here's the more information: when I link to Amazon products, I'm typically linking to my affiliate page, and getting a cut if you think it's worth buying. If you don't think it's worth buying, or think my recommendations are trash, I don't get a cut. If you'd like to find out what I'm talking about without paying the cut to me, thereby increasing Amazon's profit, go directly to their website without using my link, and find it yourself. Same information either way. It's up to you.

For those of us who are aware that massive disclosures do not produce better decisions (and who are pleased about the (PDF)Nobel Prize awarded to the one who proved it true), this is an example of a waste of time on many, many levels: but your government, the one that needs to spend hundreds of billions next year because employment is cratering now, wanted you to know.

Since my last insurance post, you may have wondered whether Asurion has done a better job since.

My wife's phone broke, and she asked me to handle it. So I tried to fill in the form online, only to find out that it wouldn't recognize the address -- so I called the number, talked to a nice guy who took all the details. Then I got a confirming email: without the PMB number that is mine. Then UPS showed a delivery instruction, which had no suite number. So I printed out the two emails, took them down to Garo at the mailing place, and said, "Can you intercept this before they get it back?" He said he could, and sure enough, he called saying that it had arrived. Oddly enough, the address had the suite number (though it still missed the PMB number) even though UPS hadn't confirmed it.

Took home, charged up, called the numbers, got it going, and handed it to my wife, who is using it again. Not bad, not quite painless.

RESULT: cheaper than buying a new phone, worth it.

Any questions?

• 06:50 .g0ja. #

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Sa Nuit D'ete (Nocturnes) by Lauridsen is a haunting, unexpectedly powerful choral work. I enjoy it. Proverb (1995) by Steve Reich illustrates his essential weakness: he composes by coming up with a concept, rather than a visual or auditory line: what a small thought to fill 11 minutes. Igor Stravinsky I've listened to enough to think he's over-rated at the moment. And "Three Songs from Statuesque (2005) by Jake Heggie is a pleasure to listen to, with funny moments (Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman 1932 being my favorite.)

From an interesting discussion at Starbucks the other day, oddly enough browser independent:

What the browser needs is a way for me to move options to, and reorder options within, the various menus (including the one that pops up on right-click). The reason? I only use three choices, but have 10 options, and it doesn't even include print, which I also use occasionally.

• 18:11 Night at the Museum: Tokoyo Drift is as enjoyable as the first one. #

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From a letter by a cancer specialist:

Every analysis of oncology suggests that we have a 10-30% deficit of trained physicians staring us in the face by 2020. Every academic analysis suggests one or another program, and bemoans the difficulty in attracting qualified medical students and residents to oncology. It's quite simple, really: very hard work, and declining income. Private practice physicians have seen a fall of approximately 30% since 2004. Worsening economics are right around the corner. Given the extraordinary expense of chemotherapy and supportive therapies, combined with reimbursements that just exceed a wash, it will become impossible to deliver outpatient care in more than half the venues in the United States quite soon. And then, simply put, the senior physicians will quit....

I could go on, but this note is far too long already. Specialists, and underpaid generalists will hang it up years ahead of their planned exit from medicine in just about any system that the Obama administration is likely to devise. They'll scarcely need to ration care: there just won't be anyone around to deliver it. Government will kill the golden goose, and then blame it upon everyone and anyone else. As usual.

Name me happy workers whose wages have fallen 30% in the past five years. Actually, name me anyone else whose wages have fallen 30% and who still thinks they're going to not take early retirement where they can. And we are about to have the largest cohort enter the senior citizen ranks just in time for the system to fail them.

There are two fixes now, widely discussed everywhere but in the media:

1. Allow health insurance companies registered in any state to sell their policies in every state.

2. Require all insurers to offer plans to everyone as a condition of offering it to anyone.

• 19:52 Guideline is simple: are they Repubs? #

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• 19:55 LA Symphony plays two pieces: an early Mozart symphony and Bruckner's 7th --one 20 minutes, one 65. Guess! #

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A brilliant point about the financial crisis and regulation:

I'm sure everyone has seen various op-eds, blog posts, and so forth proclaiming that the financial crisis shows that capitalism can't be left "unregulated", and that the end of "free market ideology" is nigh.

It seems obvious to me, though, that critics are comparing markets (which were far from unregulated) to a hypothetical, rational, efficient, regulatory system, which is a classic nirvana fallacy.

I won't dispute that many market actors--banks, bond rating agencies, mortgage companies, etc.--hardly acquitted themselves well during the housing bubble and resulting financial crash. But exactly which government actors acquitted themselves well? The public-private Fannie and Freddie Frankensteins, which helped inflate the bubble and whose bailouts will cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars? The Treasury Department, which failed to do anything proactive to prevent the crisis, and ultimate whose reaction to it under Paulsen ranged from subdued panic to hyperactive panic? The Federal Reserve, whose monetary policies were probably the biggest villain in the whole fiasco, and whose chairman famously argued, absurdly, that housing prices nationwide could not go down because they never had before (and even more absurdly based his policies on such nonsense)? Congress, which pushed Fannie and Freddie to make ever more risky loans, berated (and regulated) financial companies for not generously lending to subprime borrowers, and not only prevented the Bush Administration from reforming Fannie and Freddie but gave them even more lending authority just as the crisis was emerging? And which then passed a "stimulus" bill full of longstanding Democratic priorities but rather short on actual stimulus? State and local governments, which spent lavishly when bubble-related tax revenues were way up, and almost none of which prudently planned for the bubble's bursting? And which bought into the "everyone should own a house mentality" to the extent that they were disinclined to use their existing regulatory powers to rein in crazy mortgage practices (like 0 down, option arms to insolvent borrowers) and indeed barely prosecuted rampant bubble-time mortgage fraud?

In other words, our problem is not no regulation (free markets) versus government control: our problem is a bunch of greedy SOBs on whom we sic other greedy SOBs with the thought that "it takes a thief to catch a thief".

An interesting short piece from someone I enjoy arguing with.

Reading is really hard. There have been those who said that in order to write well, you had to be able to read: but standout counterexamples put paid to that theory. Mr. Norris presents his numbers, and says, "So much for the idea that flexibity to hire and fire produces more jobs."

He includes a graph in the newspaper.




Do you notice the distance between the lower line (US) and the upper line (Europe) for the majority of the time covered? This area represents jobs, paychecks, in the US not issued in Europe. Yes, the two lines have converged, and Yes, the time displayed is only 15 years, and Yes, this is not the measure to compare (total employment in Europe, expressed as a percentage, and the same in the US), but it gives a feeling anyway. His whole article is a hymn to the dot on the right and speculation as to what might happen in it. The dot itself, of course, is subject to revision.

Sigh.

In one of the funniest articles he's written, A N Wilson says what's wrong with the Sony Walkman, and calls it "the gadget that helped break Britain."

For those of us who liked getting on a bus or a train and overhearing, or even taking part in, conversations, there is something a bit bleak about the dozens of private solitudes which nowadays clamber aboard.

It apparently hasn't occured to him that many of them are listening to the music from the walkman, ipod, or whatever in preference to listening to him. But I suspect they prefer their music to his conversation.

• 14:52 Liberty Station has a good children's playground for under 8's. #

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1. Is global warming occurring?

Nine out of ten US weather stations will report warming over the relevant period. Sadly, this is due primarily to technical faults in the weather stations, not to global warming. Either they are sited in places which have developed heat sources, or they are constructed of materials that intensify the effect of heat over time, or the data was "adjusted" by the NOAA to make a record the way they wanted it. In other words, the data presented by NOAA is unreliable far in excess of the sensitivity needed to report the minor warming that has been alleged: it's garbage. It is possible that the record in other countries is better done: but I'd like to see them do the work, first.

2. The CO2 model has problems when you do the math.

The runaway warming forecast by alarmists contradicts basic physics. I admit the paper takes a while to read ("a while" meaning about a week's study until I could do the work it describes, but then I've always been a bit slower on complex mathematics). If you'd like a popular summary instead, check this out. It's cuter and saves time. The research was backstopped recently by this paper, though I haven't read it enough to duplicate it yet. There is no runaway global warming, no forcing.

3. Really doing the science causes problems for the IPCC model.

The predictions for this decade do not match the reality. And models which fail to predict the past results aren't usually worth relying on for future results.

4. On the other hand, semi-famous judges with a penchant for economics have decided that they are climate experts, and it is all proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and those who disagree are kooks.

I guess I'm a kook. I like logic too much to give it up when important people say to.

• 21:27 Testing the limits of thought. #

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• 21:18 Annoyance: the proposed health plan is MEANT to destroy insurance. www.breitbart.tv/html/330913.html #
• 21:32 If you wanted to make health insurance affordable, you'd simply say that a plan approved in one state could be sold in every state. But no. #

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I'll bet you think that's impossible, right? Bank of America is a large bank, and the government wouldn't simply threaten them with being fired to get them to lose shareholders' money?

Not according to the Attorney General of New York: they were supposed to lose money on the Merrill Lynch buyout or be fired.

What was missing, of course, was a good reason why the pension funds that hold BofA stock should have to take the hit: they have older people to look after, who need the money they were promised.

Governmental compassion on display. We're in the best of hands.

Seen the promises out there for "new, green jobs"? Wondered what you were being promised?

Well, let's start by saying what it isn't (paper on SSRN, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:

A rapidly growing literature promises that a massive program of government mandates, subsidies, and forced technological interventions will reward the nation with an economy brimming with green jobs. Not only will these jobs improve the environment, but they will be high paying, interesting, and provide collective rights. This literature is built on mythologies about economics, forecasting, and technology.

Myth: Everyone understands what a green job is.

Reality: No standard definition of a green job exists.

Myth: Creating green jobs will boost productive employment.

Reality: Green jobs estimates include huge numbers of clerical, bureaucratic, and administrative positions that do not produce goods and services for consumption.

Myth: Green jobs forecasts are reliable.

Reality: The green jobs studies made estimates using poor economic models based on dubious assumptions.

Myth: Green jobs promote employment growth.

Reality: By promoting more jobs instead of more productivity, the green jobs described in the literature encourage low-paying jobs in less desirable conditions. Economic growth cannot be ordered by Congress or by the United Nations. Government interference - such as restricting successful technologies in favor of speculative technologies favored by special interests - will generate stagnation.

Myth: The world economy can be remade by reducing trade and relying on local production and reduced consumption without dramatically decreasing our standard of living.

Reality: History shows that nations cannot produce everything their citizens need or desire. People and firms have talents that allow specialization that make goods and services ever more efficient and lower-cost, thereby enriching society.

Myth: Government mandates are a substitute for free markets.

Reality: Companies react more swiftly and efficiently to the demands of their customers and markets, than to cumbersome government mandates.

Myth: Imposing technological progress by regulation is desirable.

Reality: Some technologies preferred by the green jobs studies are not capable of efficiently reaching the scale necessary to meet today's demands and could be counterproductive to environmental quality.

Let's spend a moment on those notes about employment: will more people have jobs as a result of these policies? Start with a report from a country that has actually tried the policy: Spain. What do we learn about employment under green jobs?

Optimistically treating European Commission partially funded data, we find
that for every renewable energy job that the State manages to finance, Spain’s
experience cited by President Obama as a model reveals with high confidence,
by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs
on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created, to which we have to add
those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would
have created.

In other words, if we look at everything in the best light possible, we expect that those green jobs should RAISE unemployment, not decrease it. Do you think that is a good public policy? Do you think perhaps your congresscritter might be open to listening to you? Your family and friends? Take a moment and speak to one of these choices. It's your country.

• 15:23 Thinking about symphonies, access, and afternoon performances. Wondering if the Philharmonic is up to it. #
• 15:50 Lottery: a tax on people who don't earn enough to be taxed in other ways. #
• 16:27 @hnealiii catching up on life, the universe, and a few events (somehow history keeps happening) #

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