If only we had some warning!

Stuff like this drives me nuts. From the NY Times: "Wave of debt payments facing U.S. government"

The problem, many analysts say, is that record government deficits have arrived just as the long-feared explosion begins in spending on benefits under Medicare and Social Security. The nation’s oldest baby boomers are approaching 65, setting off what experts have warned for years will be a fiscal nightmare for the government.

In what context is the word "feared" used here? In "feared" there's the implication that the mathematical certainty of Medicare's and Social Security's insolvency would not come to pass. In what way was this not foreseen by Washington and bloggers alike? The Social Security and Medicare trustees put out a report every year explaining that benefit levels cannot continue much beyond the next couple decades.

The Left and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) play up the certitude of global warming despite the prevailing evidence. But bring up the fiscal vacuity of America's entitlement programs and you're just trying to destroy FDR's legacy. Well, good luck with your Medicare cuts, boys.

Extra – Robert Samuelson tries again with "The assault on the young": "Working Americans -- the young and middle-aged -- already pay a huge part of the health costs of the elderly through Medicare and Medicaid. These will grow with an aging population and surging health spending. Either taxes will rise or other public services will fall."

More - Megan Mcardle: "We're going broke anyway, so why not spend like drunken sailors?"

Some "funny" stuff I found in my latest issue of Wired - The "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks.

You can't fool all the people - David Broder discusses health care reform in "A budget-buster in the making." He notes that less than one-fifth of Americans believe Obama's promise that the plan will not add to the federal deficit. That's change you can't believe in.

Deep in the red - Here's former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eikin with "The coming deficit disaster."

Bah, humbug on taxes - Business Week: "Best e-commerce sites for the holidays." Take a guess how much spending I'll be doing in Massachusetts and the state's new 6.25% sales tax.

Bold new blog. Hooray. Now I can bore u from my phone.

Testing 123. Mobile blog post.

Update - Wow, that's cool. Now I have to figure out formatting.

Like a boring straw, there is no bend - Megan McArdle has a detailed review of the likely funding (and underfunding) scenarios for the health care bill in "Preliminary thoughts on the CBO report." "I think it's pretty clear at this point that no bill from our Congress is going to meaningfully 'bend the cost curve'." Here's some additional commentary from Krauthammer.

Smoke and mirrors on steroids

The Senate's health care reform bill is deficit neutral only if you believe Congress will cut payments to doctors for reimbursements, raise taxes to unprecedented levels, and slash a half-trillion dollars from Medicare. James Capretta details the "$4.9 trillion spending increase"

For starters, the Reid plan assumes that Medicare physician fees will get cut by about 20 percent beginning in 2011 and then remain very restrained indefinitely. Virtually no one in Congress believes that will happen, nor do they want it to.

In the first ten years, CBO says it would total nearly $500 billion, which is bad enough. But in the second decade, the tax increase would balloon to about $1.7 trillion, in large part because of the hidden tax hikes associated with bracket creep. Over 20 years, Senate Democrats are thus planning to raise taxes on the American people by about $2.2 trillion.

Finally, there are the Medicare cuts. Despite all of the talk of “delivery system reform,” the Senate Democratic plan would not transform American medicine to make it more efficient. No, they would simply cut payment rates for providers of services. On paper, the cuts are massive. CBO says they would total nearly $450 billion in Medicare over the first ten years, but then grow to about $1.9 trillion in the next decade. Just like physician fees, virtually no one believes Congress will sustain arbitrary payment rate cuts of this magnitude.

Here's the wrap-up:

On paper, the Reid plan plus the “doc fix” would increase total federal spending by about $4.9 trillion over 20 years. Senate Democrats would resort to bracket creep and other tax hikes to raise $2.2 trillion over the same period. The balance would be made up with spending reductions, mainly in Medicare, that no one believes can be sustained, and in any event do not constitute “health reform.” In other words, it’s a tax-and-spend bill of the highest order. And only the spending is certain to happen.

At the very moment in history when the Baby Boomers are poised to tip entitlement spending into the stratosphere, Obamacare will dwarf those programs and bankrupt this country. Nobody can explain away this math. Oh, yeah, and the whole deal may be unconstitutional to boot.

Government intervention: is there anything it can't fix make worse?

If you liked the stimulus bill that brought us double-digit unemployment, "Cash for Clunkers" that cost $24,000 a vehicle and the AIG bailout, then you'll love Kiribati's plan to save the fish. NPR: "Reef Conservation Strategy Backfires"

Kiribati (pronounced KIR-a-bahs) has a simple economy. People either catch fish, or they pick coconuts from their trees and produce coconut oil. Sheila Walsh, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University, says most people do a bit of each.

The Kiribati government was concerned about overfishing. So it came up with a plan: It would subsidize the coconut oil industry.

"The thought was that by paying people more to do coconut agriculture, they would do less fishing," says Walsh. "And this would fulfill two goals: One, they would reduce overfishing; and two, people would be better off. They would have higher incomes."

Walsh wanted to know whether this plan was working, and the government invited her to study the issue. So, as part of her graduate work at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, she flew to Kiribati to interview fishermen.

"And it turned out that, actually, the result of paying people more to do coconut agriculture was to increase fishing," she says. In fact, fishing increased by a startling 33 percent. The reef fish population dropped by an estimated 17 percent, putting the whole ecosystem at risk.

"It was a bit of a surprise, and we were wondering: What's going on here?"

The answer was simplicity itself. Walsh's study concludes that people earned more money making coconut oil, which meant they could work less to support themselves. And they spent their new leisure time fishing.

"It hit us like a bumper sticker saying - a bad day fishing is better than a good day working. And that's sort of the story here," Walsh says.

Here's Chief Brody advising Quint on how to spend his coconut profits:

And now, your moment of Zen

A parable for your consideration:

Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling. Coming around the bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.

"Come on girl," said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in her arms, he carried her over the mud.

Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. "We monks don’t go near females," he told Tanzan, "Especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"

"I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"

Meditate, and then compare and contrast to the bizarre obsession of Andrew Sullivan for Sarah Palin.

Extra – Megan McArdle: "Palinoia" strikes deep.

Gettin' right to the point

Wasting no time, here's Jeffrey Flier in his opening sentences:

As the dean of Harvard Medical School I am frequently asked to comment on the health-care reform debate. I'd give it a failing grade.

Just like the Massachusetts plan, Dr. Flier writes that the health care bill moving through Congress will "markedly accelerate health-care spending rather than restrain it." I think that's a given at this juncture.

Like I've been saying - Opinion Journal: "Where are the doctors to implement Obamacare? - A University of California chancellor warns that America could soon look like Massachusetts." Aaaahh!

Anybody laughing yet? - General Motors is bankrupt, just posted another loss, but they swear they're going to pay back the American taxpayers. This is a joke right? The Truth About Cars writes: "GM's first post-bankruptcy financial data has arrived, underscoring in red ink the folly of the government 'investment' in the shambling zombie once known as General Motors."

Ken Ober checks out - NY Times: "Ken Ober, "Remote Control" host, is dead." Geez, he was only 52; cause of death "not immediately known."

"Remote Control" was MTV's first foray away from videos and into TV shows. It was a super-cheap game show where Ober would ask trivia questions, sometimes mixed with little skits. A little-known actor named Adam Sandler got his start there as "Stud Boy." My all-time favorite bit starred Denis Leary as "Colin's Bruddah." Leary would come out as co-host Colin Quinn's belligerent brother, ask a question, and inevitably get into a fight with his Irish sibling. Ober would then break up the fight with some stereotype like: "Hey guys, there's a new Pogues album out!"

Also funny: "Dead or Canadian." Oops, sorry Ken (not Canadian.)

Not cutting costs, part 2 - Robert Samuelson looks at health care reform and declares that costs will skyrocket: "Their sweeping overhaul of the health care system - which Congress is halfway towards enacting - would almost certainly make matters worse." He echoes one of my points in that the program could never be deficit-neutral because Congress will not carve $400 billion out of Medicare. Ain't gonna happen.

Extra - From Contentions.

MassCare eats away at the economy in the Bay State

There were two articles in the Boston Globe of special interest for those who want to see how the Massachusetts health care reform will play out when extended nationwide. First, small businesses are getting socked with double-digit increases in insurance rates: "Small businesses bridle at health insurance hikes"

At a time when both the state and the nation are struggling to rein in health care costs, many small businesses in Massachusetts say they’re receiving the largest premium increases in years for their Jan. 1 renewals. Insurers in September said they expect to raise premiums an average of 10 percent next year, but some employers are facing increases that are double or triple that - or even higher.

What does this mean? Surprise surprise, small businesses are not going to hire more workers and/or they're passing the increased cost on to current employees:

According to Blue Cross, the majority of its customers have been redesigning their plans through "buydowns," which use higher deductibles and other features to shift more of the cost to employees.

And here it comes:

"The main driver in insurance premiums is the cost of health care," Maltz said. Another factor, he said, is the state universal health care law, which has compelled insurers to merge newly insured individuals - a high-cost group - into small-business insurance plans.

When Americans are compelled to purchase health insurance to comply with a federal plan, the insurance companies will face the same problem on a national scale. Somebody will have to pay and it's going to be you, in the forms of higher insurance rates, taxes, and borrowing.

If we now flip over to the business section of today's Globe, we find this troubling news: "Downturn isn't over yet for Bay State – Latest numbers change predictions for Massachusetts"

As a result, it now appears the state will lag behind the national rebound by three or four months, according to a recent forecast by the New England Economic Partnership, a nonprofit research group.

Cause and effect.

Not cutting costs - The Hill: "House health bill will hike costs $289B" That's what the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) says.

Plus, there's this from the WashPost: "Nonpartisan agency says House bill will reduce senior care." No wonder Nancy Pelosi pushed through that quick Saturday vote.

The amateur-in-chief

Forgetting that he's the President of the United States of America, Obama committed a breach of protocol and bowed deeply to Japan's emperor Akihito. The LA Times asked "How low will he go?" and Powerline queried "Why is this man bowing?" I think the answer can be found in this quote from "The Remains of the Day":

Lewis: "You are, all of you, amateurs. And international affairs should never be run by gentlemen amateurs. Do you have any idea of what sort of place the world is becoming all around you? The days when you could just act out of your noble instincts, are over. Europe has become the arena of realpolitik, the politics of reality. If you like: real politics. What you need is not gentlemen politicians, but real ones. You need professionals to run your affairs, or you're headed for disaster!"

The answer may be more prosaic: Obama's the "change" guy so, whatever might have been the norm for 200+ years, he's going to do the opposite. The exception is creating deficits - there he's going to blow away all previous administrations.

Flashback - Hot Air: "NY Times blasts Clinton for almost bowing."

More - Memeorandum roundup.

Americans aren't buyin' it - Megan McArdle reveals that "the more we talk about health care reform, the less popular it gets."

Everything's bigger in Texas - Including the job market. According to Business Week, Texas is home to four out the the top five cities in America for job creation. The fifth is in Utah.

Wanna get into Princeton? Move out of New Jersey - As you know, this move came too late for me, but colleges across the nation are giving special consideration to out-of-state students because they normally need to pay a higher tuition, which then subsidizes the in-state students.

Freestyle - Just got back from my son's swim meet where he shaved three seconds off his 50m freestyle time, and a first place finish to boot. Nice.

Constitution schmonstitution - Congress plans to mandate that Americans purchase health insurance and jail 'em if they don't. Any basis in law? Well there's that "general welfare" part of the Constitution which implies that the government can force you to eat spinach too.

Holi-day wi-fi - PC World: "Thanks Google, but airport wi-fi should always be free." It should, since it's so critical to business, but airports can't resist sources of revenue.

Veterans Day



I miss my dog. When I picked her up from the kennel, she would cry and slobber all over my car on the ride home. And that was after only a week or so.

Obama chooses not to decide - Fox News "Obama won't take any current war options": "President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday."

I'm sure the boys in Oslo are so proud.

Flashback – Here's Jennifer Rubin, earlier today: "After delaying and equivocating, the president must, soon we are promised yet again, announce the policy, quiet the critics, regain the confidence of our allies and the Afghanistan government, and impress on the enemy that we really do mean business."

Extra – Hot Air: "Obama votes 'present'"

More – AFP reports that the U.S. ambassador in Kabul is essentially overriding the opinion of General McChrystal on Afghanistan.

And this - AoSHQ: "Smartest guy in the room."

Millions for Botox, but not one cent for flu shots - Real Clear Markets: "Health reform's moral hazard"

Best news today - CNN: "Police officer who shot Fort Hood suspect says she's 'doing well'" I had heard Officer Munley had lost a lot of blood after the shootout but now it looks like she's on the mend.

Just makin' stuff up, Boston-style - Remember that stimulus package that was supposed to "create or save" jobs? Not so much. Boston Globe "Stimulus job boost in state exaggerated, review finds": "While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated."

The conspiracy to keep you poor and dependent - Government-run health care is an opportunity to make Americans more dependent on the government...and that helps the statist Democrats. At least one guy let the cat out of the bag: "Confessions of an ObamaCare backer."

More - From Q&O.

Twenty years ago - BBC News asks: "Where were you when the Berlin Wall came down?" Golly, since I was just starting my senior year at Rutgers, I was probably at the Ale & Wich with my roommates, sharing a $4 pitcher of Budweiser. If my usual jukebox selections were coming on then "I'll be Doggone" by Marvin Gaye would be playing.

Somewhere, deep in my archives, I have a New York Times wrapped in plastic showing people celebrating freedom. Great times.

Once the foot is in the door, expansion forever

I’m back kinda late from New York, so I'll just borrow this thought from Mark Steyn on the passage of the health care bill:

If "health care" were about health care, the devil would be in the details. But it's not about health or costs or coverage; it's about getting over the river and burning the bridge. It doesn't matter what form of governmentalized health care gets passed as long as it passes. Once it’s in place, it will be "reformed", endlessly, but it will never be undone.

The history of Social Security and Medicare and damn near every government program follows the same pattern: start small and expand later. When Social Security was started in the mid-1930's, the program collected 1% from your income along with 1% from your employer; these contributions went to fund a program to prevent poverty in old age. Now Social Security collects 6.2% of your income (12.4% for the self-employed) to fund a much healthier and wealthier senior population compared to their Depression-era counterparts.

The health care bill that just passed in the House is estimated to cost $1.2 trillion, well above President Obama's insistence that the legislation fall under the $900 billion limit. No matter: it's now blindingly obvious that Obama will sign any legislation at all to get that foot in the door. The price setting, rationed care, doctor shortage, and the exploding deficit? Those are details to work out later, after the big "win."

Extra – Opinion Journal: "The Lords of Entitlement – Every medical insurance decision will be subject to rationing by politics."

More - Minuteman: "Health care that's always a scare."

Get ready for the mass conversion - From the KC Star: "Would I have to have insurance? Yes, or pay a penalty of 2.5 percent of your income. Hardship and religious waivers would be available, and some very low-wage earners would be exempt. The requirement would begin in 2013." Whoa...what religion gets a free pass?

I think it's Ned Flanderism:

Maude Flanders: "Neddy doesn't believe in insurance. He considers it a form of gambling."

Hi-dilly ho, government intervention!

See you soon - Goin' to see Ma this weekend.

Stuff you didn't know - Slate has some background in a Fort Hood FAQ.

$3.8 billion in sales, $5 at a time - Business Week has a great article about the genius of Subway's Five-dollar Footlong, both from a product and a marketing viewpoint. C'mon, admit it, you love that jingle.

Fort Hood tragedy - Fox News: "Suspected gunman in custody after deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood." The news conference from Texas was delayed almost three hours before the shocking news, contradicting previous reports, that the shooter was alive and in custody. The female police officer who cut him down is also alive, thank heaven.

Big roundup at Memorandum.

Update - Profile in cowardice: Hasan joined the army right out of high school and the United States paid for college and medical school. But then they ordered him deployed to active duty.

Yeah...we know - Real Clear Markets: "Why middle class tax hikes are coming"

I'm saved!

Don Surber: "Obama saved 935 jobs at a place that employs 508 people"

Take it away, Elvis:

Welcome back, old chap - I was going to write about last night's results but by the time I get home from work it's old news. So let's just welcome Atlantic Crossings to the blogroll, the rejuvenated site that used to be called Expat Yank.

Chris Christie gets the checkmark - New Jersey's largest newspaper, the Star-Ledger, declares a Republican win in the Garden State. Wow, and it wasn't even close: with 81% of the vote in, Christie still holds onto a 5% lead. Everybody thought this was going until morning.

Watching New Jersey - With almost half the vote counted (48% at 9:30pm EST) Christie is up 49-44% over Corzine.

Update - 53% of the vote in, Christie up by 4%. Tight, tight, tight.

More - Here's a good NJ map from the NY Times. With 58% in, it's a 6% lead for Christie. But something's wrong with Sussex County - no way that county went for Corzine.

Told ya so - RCP blog: "A typo? In 2005, Corzine lost [Sussex] 60-35."

Update 2 - They fixed Sussex county. With 64% of the vote in, Christie has a stubborn 6% lead, 50%-44% and he's approaching a 100,000 vote lead.

Another update - 68% of the vote in and Christie still leads by 6%. Corzine's Intrade rating is down to single digits (probability of winning, that is.) Looking at the map, it's unclear where Corzine can pick up more votes.

Beware this guy

Boston Globe: "Don't get fooled again - freecreditreport.com aims to make you spend money."

It's expensive - Even before the inevitable cost overruns, the health care bill moving through the House has climbed to a $1.2 trillion price tag.

New Jersey prediction

Tomorrow there are some off-year elections and it looks like the Virginia governor's race and NY-23 are in the bag. The only contest left is New Jersey and the fight between incumbent governor Jon Corzine and Republican challenger Chris Christie. This campaign has been deadlocked for weeks. However, I think Christie will find a new home in Trenton.

First of all, I'm not some partisan optimist since I called the Presidential election for Obama a month before the November vote. But there are a couple of reasons why I can't see Corzine winning. First of all, he's had consistently high disapproval ratings for months. Second, whatever advantage he had as a trader at Goldman Sachs has faded in the financial meltdown. Third, all the enthusiasm now seems to be on Christie's side meaning that - even with the voter identification mismatch - there will be a substantial vote for him in this deep-blue state.

But, perhaps most importantly, Jon Corzine is just a bad governor. New Jersey has held the bottom spot for the worst state in America to do business thanks to sky-high property and business taxes. Unemployment in the Garden State is at 9.7%, if you believe the Corzine spinners. It helps to explain why people are trying to get the heck out of New Jersey (like I did 18 years ago).

So let's apply Occam's razor: Corzine is a poor leader who is unpopular because taxes are high. Christie offers a new direction and all the enthusiasm is on his side; this might explain the desperate last-minute robocalls for independent Daggett, paid for by the Democrats.

Prediction: Chris Christie wins by a slim margin, say 52%-48%.

Update - Dang it, I forgot about Daggett. Let's say 47-45-8%.

Worst bill ever - That's how the Wall Street Journal describes the Pelosicare bill in the House. This is a masterpiece of unminced words: "The healthcare bill that [Pelosi] unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a "critical milestone," may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced." The editorial gives a detailed account of a runaway new entitlement in a time of exploding debt that will force European levels of taxation.

Perspective on profits - In today's Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby compares the "immoral" profits of the health insurance companies versus, say, Tupperware: "Hyperbole in the health debate."

The 2% solution - From the AP: "After all the fuss, public health plan covers few." It turns out that the CBO has determined that the House health care plan will attract only 2% of Americans. If the government-run plan is designed to be a low-cost counterweight to the private insurance companies, it will inevitably draw high risk patients who cannot get regular insurance. Without a pool of younger, healthier Americans joining the program, costs will spiral out of control especially since coverage cannot be denied. And who will benefit? Those evil for-profit insurance companies who will be happy to shed their problem patients.

Extra - From Gateway Pundit: Americans aren't buying what Nancy Pelosi is selling.

Hey, it's Halloween, not April Fools Day

NY Times: "Democrats push for plan to cut deficit" Clearly this brilliant plan involves passing one trillion-dollar expenditure after another. Have they seen this graph?

Boo!

Ford is punished for staying solvent

Well, moral hazard has raised its ugly head again. The UAW workers at Ford Motor have rejected contract changes to cut labor costs.

Ford sought the deal to bring its labor costs in line with Detroit rivals Chrysler Group and General Motors, both of which won concessions from the union as they headed into bankruptcy protection earlier this year.

Tough luck, guys. Next time get your fat government bailout.

Related - From The Truth About Cars, we'll find that Cash for Clunkers was a big success, General Motors is on the pathway to solvency, and both those statements are untrue.

NY-23 shocker - Four days before the special election, Scozzafava drops out.

Clinton tells it like it is - I have to say it: I was pleased to see Hillary Clinton tell Pakistan that we'd like some help rooting out Al Qaeda. "That's a nice multi-billion dollar foreign aid package you got there - shame if anything happened to it."

The Pelosicare bill

Here's a roundup from the AP. And here's all you need to know:

It costs a trillion dollars.

It's paid for by taxes that won't be collected and cuts to Medicare that will never happen.

Extra – From Critical Condition: "The insanity of the House bill"

The bill unveiled today by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should put to rest for good the thought that this year’s legislative process will produce anything other than a total fiscal and health policy disaster.

To sum it up, the House bill is nothing but a massive, uncontrolled federal entitlement expansion - at a time when the central, looming threat to the nation’s long-term prosperity is the unaffordable health-care entitlements already on the federal books. To create the impression of fiscal responsibility, the bill is jury-rigged with budget gimmicks, implausible eligibility rules, and arbitrary, government-dictated price controls - that have been tried repeatedly without success - to make it look like it costs “only” $900 billion over a decade.

Yee-ouch! Let's debate!

More - Legal Insurrection: "The message of this bill is...do not add employees." That's OK, there are plenty of jobs out there.

Not the Delorean! - Business Week: "Fifty ugliest cars of the past 50 years."

Schwarzenegger's note - According to this professor on NPR, it's really unlikely that the letter placement came together by coincidence.

Just say "neigh"

Some have called the public option in health care reform a "Trojan horse" while others have called it a "stalking horse" but the meaning is the same: sneak up on the enemy in a non-threatening manner and then spring the trap.

Over at National Journal, former HHS secretary Mike Leavitt explains what will happen once the government gets into the health insurance biz:

A government-run plan is dangerous for three reasons: One, it would be cheaper for employers to stop offering private insurance and funnel their employees into the government-run plan. Employers, not employees, would get to make that choice. Two, the government-run plan would use the coercive force of government to dictate the prices that could be charged by others - by doctors, nurses, and hospitals - in a way that private entities cannot. Three, the government-run plan would be subsidized by American taxpayers, while private plans are not.

Let no one be deceived into thinking that Congress would not subsidize the government-run plan. Once in place, Congress would favor it with all kinds of innovative provisions designed to “help” participants “make the right choice.”

Also, the "opt-out" ploy is a big scam:

Financial subsidies for a public plan, whether direct or indirect, would be financed by taxpayers - by taxpayers in all fifty states. States would not be allowed to opt out of having their residents pay these federal taxes. They would only be allowed to opt out of receiving their share of the federal subsidies.

Harry Reid appears intent on at least bring the public option up for a vote but, if the "doc fix" vote is any indication, there are quite a few moderate Democrats unwilling to plunge into this wide, expensive world of government-run health care.

Three books

I'm a sucker for these kinds of lists but Megan links to a post asking what three books you would recommend to somebody who disagreed with you. We agreed on #1:

"Parliament of Whores" - P.J. O'Rourke

"America Alone" - Mark Steyn

"Heaven on Earth: The rise and fall of socialism" - Joshua Muravchik

Yeah, that'll do for now, although I'll probably think of a couple honorable mentions by tomorrow.

Krugman comes to praise Massachusetts health care

And once you get past his dismissal of inconvenient polls, you'll find this admission:

And the Massachusetts plan hasn’t yet done anything significant to contain costs.

Say what now? I thought the whole point of health care reform was that "the cost of doing nothing is too great." Here's what Obama's teleprompter read this past September:

Finally, our health care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers. When health care costs grow at the rate they have, it puts greater pressure on programs like Medicare and Medicaid. If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined. Put simply, our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close. Nothing else.

And here's Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) on "This Week" yesterday:

"The devil we know is much worse than what we are proposing to do," she said. You can't be a serious deficit hawk," and not pass a bill, she added.

Everything's going to work out fine because President Obama has sworn he will not sign a bill unless it is deficit-neutral. And – you'll see – Congress will buckle down and start making some serious cuts to the budget to pare the deficit.

Or not.

Extra - Via RCP, here's Robert Samuelson: "The public plan delusion."

More - Critical Condition: "The $400 billion in Medicare and Medicaid “savings” will not happen, and Reid and other leaders are still scrambling to find a mix of $500 billion in new taxes that can win enough votes to pass. No one has put together that magic formula." In other words, the funding for the baseline plan isn't in place, even before costs go all Massachusetts on us.

Strike that, reverse it - Robert Samuelson on Newsweek blog: "Now, in the first comprehensive evaluation by a government agency of one of the major congressional health-reform bills, analysts find that it does bend the cost curve - in the wrong direction." As in three-quarters of a trillion dollars over the next decade.

Sales tax sends Mass. shoppers to New Hampshire and the Internet

Today I saw an ad on TV urging consumers in Western Massachusetts to avoid the Internet and shop locally to support the local community. Well, that would have been a noble thought except the sales tax in the Bay State recently jumped up to 6.25% to pay for Beacon Hill's runaway corruption and spending.

The upshot? People are spending more in gas money to trek to New Hampshire than they would ever save in sales tax. Let's say it's out of principle.

Obama plays to a half-empty room - That's the scene at a fundraiser for Massachusetts' terrible governor Deval Patrick. The lower-priced $500-a-plate dinner room was "two-thirds full." Of course, it's tough to swing that price for rubber chicken when taxes are so high. Right, Deval? Buh-bye.

iLawsuit - What's going on with Scandinavia lately? First the Norwegians give the Nobel Prize to Obama and now the Finns at Nokia are suing Apple for patent infringement. Soon we'll see something rotten in Denmark (yuk yuk).

Roll over Beethoven

Fox Business: "Country music is the new rock n' roll"

Here's Taylor Swift, because she's cute:

That sounds like Fox News talk to me - Ruth Marcus of the WashPost thinks the Obama White House is "childish," "petty," and "Nixonesque" in its war with Fox News. You've made the list, Ruth.

Extra - Smash 'em up, the Chicago way.

Spending is forever - This is an unsettling analysis: the tax credits and direct aid from the super-successful $800 billion stimulus bill are unlikely to go away completely, so we're actually looking at another $3 trillion in spending over the next ten years. Which we don't have.

SAMCRO forever - On Tuesday, the FX network's "Sons of Anarchy" beat Jay Leno's show in the ratings. What was NBC thinking? As charming as Leno may be, nobody can watch one guy for five hours a week.

The Born ultimatum - Last night, Frontline (PBS) had a report about the financial meltdown and how one lone woman named Brooksley Born raised the alarm back in the nineties about unregulated over-the-counter derivatives. But the stock market was flying high so everybody, most notably Alan Greenspan, dismissed her. Well, she was right.

Fire up the Voight-Kampff machine - Is our President a replicant? From Vimeo: "Barack Obama's amazingly consistent smile." (H/T Scrivener)

Whichever way the wind blows

Slate speculates on "Why the Washington Post is hyping the public option." They cite three reasons for the above-the-fold story about a small uptick in support for government-run healthcare: to remind Congress of majority support, reporters are "momentum junkies" and to suggest there's been a backlash against the insurance companies.

If you read the wording of the poll, the "public option" question asks if respondents would support a plan to compete with private insurers. Well, Americans love competition, so hey - why not? It's really the most superficial kind of question for a policy loaded with unintended (and expensive) consequences. Would the public option still have this level of support if it leads to health-care rationing like in the Massachusetts model? I'd imagine not.

More eyebrow-raising in the poll is question #16: "Do you think health care reform would increase the federal budget deficit, decrease it, or have no effect?" A solid 68% of Americans think that Obama is full of it when he insists healthcare reform will be "deficit neutral." And the ten percent who think the deficit will go down are clearly delusional.

Extra - Q&O: "WaPo tries to spin poll on health care."

That was longer than I expected* - I recently signed up for Netflix and tonight we saw "The Dark Knight." But I think it was longer than "Ben Hur." Ah, there wasn't much news today anyway.

* "That's what she said!" - Michael Scott

This could be a problem at Dunder-Mifflin - From the Truth About Cars: "Pennsylvania I-80 tolling would cost jobs."

Let's hope so - WashPost: "Record-high deficit may dash big plans"

And this - Michael Barone: "Reform no one wants to pay for"

Forget what we said, let's spend more money

John Dickerson makes a good point in this Slate article "The politics don't add up - Why health care reform will cost more than Congress say it will."

For the first time since 1975, the Social Security Administration has decreed that there will be no cost of living adjustment (COLA) for seniors. Nevermind, replies the Obama administration, let's send the oldsters $250 anyway and put the $13 billion cost on the credit card. But if we can't even abide by the rules of established law, what's the likelihood that Congress will trigger automatic cuts in Medicare and health care spending when those programs get too expensive?

Vanishingly small is the correct answer. Not gonna happen.

Winter? Already? - There was an ad on TV for a local hardware store which advised: "It's never too early to start winterizing." Apparently so: it snowed here in Western Massachusetts this morning. I still have to drain the lawnmower. Much to do tomorrow.

Daamn - Charles drops the Krauthammer on Obama's foreign policy, such as it is.

Narnia, Shangri-La, Atlantis, Congress

All lands of fantasy where anything can happen:

It is beyond fantastic to promise that future Congresses, for 10 straight years, will allow planned cuts in reimbursements to hospitals, other providers, and Medicare Advantage (thereby reducing the benefits of 25% of seniors in Medicare). The 1997 Balanced Budget Act pursued this strategy and successive Congresses steadily unwound its provisions. The very fact that this Congress is pursuing an expensive new entitlement belies the notion that members would be willing to cut existing ones.

Most astounding of all is what this Congress is willing to do to struggling middle-class families. The bill would impose nearly $400 billion in new taxes and fees. Nearly 90% of that burden will be shouldered by those making $200,000 or less.

To get the health care numbers to come in "deficit-neutral" Max Baucus just made stuff up. He may as well factored in "gold coins raining down from heaven" since this is a more likely scenario than Congress slashing a half-trillion dollars from Medicare.

More - From Betsy.

The VAT tax cometh

Here's Harvard economist Greg Mankiw on the value-added tax:

Which brings us to Europe. Many European countries have both a VAT and a large government. But here is the hard question: which is cause and which is effect? Did the VAT cause government to become large, as VAT-opponents fear? Or did Europeans adopt large governments and then, needing to finance it, look for a relatively efficient way to raise a lot of revenue? I am inclined toward the latter hypothesis, but I will be the first to admit that it is entirely clear which way causation runs here.

By "here" Mankiw means the U.S.A. where a "feed the beast" mentality has locked us into entitlement spending that cannot be cut yet we can't afford.

Extra - Hot Air: "Bait and switch"

Just added - On Opinion Journal: "The dangers of a value-added tax."

Defying the laws of reason

For obvious reasons, I dig this post from John Steele Gordon on Contentions:

This is why I like engineers more than I like politicians. Engineers live in the real world. What they design has to actually function as advertised. So they don’t promise an airplane that is extremely fast, extremely fuel efficient, extremely quiet, and extremely safe. Those goals, each desirable individually, are mutually incompatible given the laws of physics. Politicians live in the political world and need only make sure that the bridges they build and the aircraft they design don’t crash in ruins before the next election. So they blithely ignore the laws of economics and human nature in designing programs. The political press corps equally pretends these laws don’t exist.

Precisely. All through this debate on the mother of all entitlements, nobody has acknowledged the elephant in the room that we're already locked into a mountain of debt due to exploding spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. So the Senate Finance Committee makes up stories to pretend the money is there but it's already been spent ten-times-to-Sunday.

What's going to happen when the money runs dry and China won't lend us any more? Well, the government big enough to give you anything is big enough to take it away:

Meanwhile, Massachusetts is offering a preview of where all this will end up. The state passed a prototype for ObamaCare in 2006 on the same cost-control theory as Senate Finance, only to see spending explode. So now Beacon Hill is contemplating far more drastic spending-control measures, such as a plan to "require residents to give up their nearly unlimited freedom to go to any hospital and specialist they want," as the Boston Globe reported on Sunday. Paul Levy, the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, told the Globe that "You can't reap these savings without limiting patients' choices in some way."

A lot of pundits believe that some kind of health care reform will pass this year. I'm terrified that we're about to take that final leap from which there is no return, complete with trillion dollar deficits beyond the horizon. I always tell my kids that credit card companies love to urge you to spend money on yourself, to splurge for those "priceless" moments, but eventually you have to pay that money back. Every time we auction off another trillion in Treasury bonds, we're mortgaging away a little chunk of our freedom because the creditor nations will hold sway over federal policy.

This is the corner we're painting ourselves into, the end of the American century.

Swedish piano stairs

EMBED-Interactive Swedish Piano Stairs - Watch more free videos

I think the words in Swedish are: "We got people to use the stairs instead of the escalator." (H/T: Theo)

Rationing, ahoy! - Your "right" to health care meets reality. Boston Globe: "State plan may place limits on patients' hospital options."

Nobel-prize winning sissy - I don't dislike Al Gore. He seems like a decent guy who is earnest about his cause. But what bugs me about Gore is that he behaves as if his environmental manifesto is the Sermon on the Mount. There shall be no questions or debate for Al Gore.

Stand and deliver. If all the climate change deniers out there are crazy, it should be easy to dispel their arguments. The problem for Gore, however, is that there are some inconvenient facts out there indicating the debate is not over.

Extra - The ice isn't melting.

It's called leadership - After raising the sales tax and driving business to the Internet or New Hampshire, the geniuses on Beacon Hill have a new idea to raise revenue: "Powerball coming to Bay State next year."

Yeah, baby, and next up is a casino here in Western Massachusetts. Since there are no jobs you may ask: who will support a Massachusetts casino? Why the Powerball winners - duh!

U-Haul wants you to drive a truck to Detroit. Please. - Interesting report about the different rates that U-Haul charges depending on whether you're heading to, or away from, a business-friendly state.

Heading from Rhode Island (the worst state for business) to Virginia (the best) is going to cost you. Goin' to Providence? Take our truck, please!

Zip line fever - It's unlikely I'll be able to stay up tonight since I spent a chunk of the day on the ropelines at Catamount Adventure Park. They transformed a ski resort into a high-wire park full of rope bridges and zip lines. Lots of fun, but I used some underutilized muscles today. At least I didn't dislocate my shoulder (again).

Hey, I just said that! - GMTA and such from the WashPost: "If anything animates Mr. Obama's critics in this country, it is the impression that he is the focus of a global cult of personality."

Update (10/11) - Hey, I said that, too! John Bolton in the NY Post: "O's albatross."

Comment of the day

I liked this one from the Washington Post Voices section:

What an outrage! My unborn granddaughter should have won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for curing cancer in 2056.

I'm sure she has good intentions and great promise, and that's enough.

Let's spend ourselves out of debt - Opinion Journal: "Step right up: a new entitlement that cuts the deficit!"

Let a thousand SNL skits bloom

When I heard the 6am news on NPR during my morning commute, my jaw hit the floor. But by the time I got to work, I decided the Nobel Peace Prize would be an albatross around Barack Obama's neck for the remainder of his term.

The award was an affirmation of all those criticisms that Obama is an empty suit who is levitated by a fawning press and an international cult of personality. Thanks to five Norwegians, for the remainder of his term he'll be dogged by two characterizations: he's the guy who won the prize without actually doing anything and he's the Peace Prize winner who's Commander in Chief during wartime.

The skits write themselves. A young Obama shows up for the spelling bee and is immediately deemed the winner. Or we could see a "Celebrity Jeopardy" episode where Alex Trebek just says "close enough" to every response. Your intentions are good enough for us, Mr. President!

And what's going to happen when Obama sends 20,000 troops to Afghanistan? Can anybody take him seriously when he says military action is "on the table" when it comes to a nuclear Iran? The Peace Prize puts every military decision under a microscope that does not help Obama as Commander-in-Chief. Nine months into his Presidency, the Prize at this juncture is a net-minus.

Extra - The mockery begins: nominate Obama for the Heisman trophy.

More - At least one Brit fails to see the humor, er...humour, in the matter: "Absurd decision on Obama makes a mockery of the Nobel peace prize."

And this - More from the Minuteman.

If I had some ham, I could have a ham sandwich, if I had some bread

The current thinking on the "deficit neutral" health care bill is: if we raise taxes and cut spending elsewhere, we can have national health care, but we won't cut spending elsewhere. That leaves taxes.

Senator Charles Grassley explains:

"The huge, untold story of this CBO report is that for the 85 percent of the people that have health insurance, their premiums will still go up because there will be a new tax on insurance policies," says Grassley. "People may say, 'What’s wrong with taxing insurance companies?' but remember, corporations don't pay taxes, people pay taxes. The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation says that these premiums will be passed on."

"Even though the CBO says the bill will cost $829 billion, a lot of its savings come from Medicare, which I don’t think is right," says Grassley. "We could also end up spending all of this money only to see taxes increase, and premiums increase, and still have 25 million people uninsured."

Here's more from Critical Condition:

Those numbers are phony for any number of reasons, but notice that the "deficit reduction" is the net result of $518 billion in increased spending from expanded insurance coverage, $404 billion in reduced spending from "other provisions affecting direct spending," and $196 billion in increased revenues. The $404 billion "does not include effects on spending subject to future appropriations." So: Will Congress actually cut Medicare reimbursements (by over 20 percent), unlike previous years? More fundamentally: The increase in revenues ($196 billion) is over twice the net reduction in the deficit. So put aside all the other problems with the numbers: None of this net "deficit reduction" results from spending efficiencies. It is all tax increases and more.

There is no chance that Congress will cut Medicare spending by $400 billion – none. I won't even qualify it with a "virtually" to give the indication there's a possibility. It won't happen. So that leaves government health care spending propped up by new taxes funneled through insurance companies the same way tobacco companies passed on new levies to smokers. Except now the "sin tax" is living.

Extra - From Wizbang: "Baucus plan gets clean CBO scorecard by raising taxes"

More - Megan explains why we should fear the Massachusetts model.

My snap review of the CBO's score of the Baucus plan - Increased spending that is certain paid for with spending cuts that are illusory and tax hikes that will never pass or raise as much money as claimed. More here.

Extra - Legal Insurrection: "There is no spoon Baucus bill."

More - Megan McArdle: "So most of the major components of the program are scheduled to either cost more, or raise less revenue . . . but overall, it's generating a bigger surplus. It's the healthcare economist's version of "We're losing money on every unit, but we'll make it up in volume!"

Paul Shaffer can't read music - That was the astonishing conclusion to this interview I heard on NPR's Morning Edition. David Letterman's bandleader has a new autobiography coming out and he revealed his rise from piano player at a topless bar in Canada to late-night troubadour. What was hilarious about the interview was that Shaffer threw it out, almost as an afterthought. The guy learned to play by ear and he's managed to make to the top.

Let us now pause to praise great engineers

The Nobel Prize in Physics was handed out in Stockholm and the winners were three "masters of light" who advanced technology to bring us high-speed internet and digital cameras. Since I'm a fiber optics engineer, I obviously have a spot in my heart for new Nobelist Charles Kao who some consider the "father of optical fiber":

Since the 1930s, researchers had been using short optical fibers-solid, slender bits of glass that trap light inside, allowing it to be transmitted.
But the available fibers didn't work over long distances, Nordgren said. "After 20 meters [66 feet], most of the light was gone."
In research published in 1966, Kao discovered that, even though the glass being used for the fiber-optic cables seemed clear, it actually carried many impurities, which were disrupting the light transmission.
Kao's discoveries pushed companies to devise new ways of making ultrapure glass—eventually leading to today's fiber-optic cables, which can carry signals hundreds of miles with very little light loss.
"More than a billion kilometers of fibers around the world that connect us all, almost instantly," the Nobel Committee's Nordgren said.
"And this is due to the work by Kao, that inspired and started the evolution of optical communication that we have today."

Kao's discovery about glass defects led to new technologies to create pure glass from scratch instead of melting it from raw materials like the glass in your window. The result was super-clear glass that could transmit light over long distances without losing the light signal. To put this in perspective, the glass was so clear it was like seeing the bottom of the ocean. The result: a vast network of communication links carrying massive amounts of data on beams of light.

In 1988, the first optical-fiber cable was laid under the Atlantic Ocean, capable of carrying tens of thousands of times more information than the metal cables it replaced. Today, more than 600 million miles of optical fiber have been laid, enough to circle the globe 25,000 times. High-efficiency optical amplifiers placed at strategic intervals renew the signals so they can travel such long distances.

Fiber-optic communication "is essential for high-speed Internet and forms the optical backbone of 21st century commerce," said H. Frederick Dylla, director of the American Institute of Physics. "The CCD sensor has revolutionized technical, professional and consumer photography in the last few decades. Taken together, these inventions may have had a greater impact on humanity than any others in the last half-century."

Congratulations, gentlemen, and thank you!

E85 in Canada - TTAC has a story about our neighbors to the North pushing 85% ethanol flex-fuel cars. There are only four E85 stations in all of Canada, the fuel is more expensive than regular gasoline, and returns worse fuel efficiency. Citing a memo from the natural resources minister, one activist noted that "promoting E85 has no environmental benefits." The Truth about Cars sardonically sums up: "When your subsidies won't work without their own subsidies, you know you're in trouble."

Related - Opinion Journal says Cash for Clunkers was "one of Washington's all-time dumb ideas."

Too much for Louisiana - You know you've made the big leagues in corruption when even Louisiana can't sit by anymore: "Louisiana attorney general: Rathke embezzled $5 million from ACORN."

Speaking in public

Although I'm an engineer by education, over the past couple years or so it seems my career has turned into one of a professional presenter. I'm a PowerPoint impresario and I'm pretty good, if I do say so myself. The keys to every presentation are essentially the same: know your audience, stick to one central theme, convey information (or entertainment), and prepare for questions and discussion. I have one essay taped up over my desk: Jay Lehr's criticism of boring speakers titled "Let there be stoning!" (PDF)

They are not sophisticated, erudite scientists speaking above our intellectual capacity; they are arrogant, thoughtless individuals who insult our very presence by their lack of concern for our desire to benefit from a meeting which we chose to attend.

To that point, let's face it: both Michelle and Barack Obama gave awful speeches to the IOC. Ann Althouse has a long post about both presentations which were at turns illogical, mawkish, self-centered and manipulative. Michelle Obama's argument for Chicago appeared to center around the fact that her father had multiple sclerosis but really loved sports. Oh, and he was from Chicago, so there's the connection.

Then she introduced her spouse in a weighty tone cleaved by dramatic pauses:

My husband

The President of the United States

Barack Obama

Look FLOTUS, everybody knows who your husband is. You don't need to stretch it out as if the IOC committee will swoon at his mere introduction.

President Obama's speech was terrible for the simple fact that he didn't seem interested in making Chicago's case for the Olympics. Instead, with enormous self-love he tried to draw some zig-zag line from the U.S. Presidential election through Chicago and - hey - give us the Olympics. People wearing the same sports jersey at a sporting event become fast friends? Why I've never heard about this phenomenon occurring anywhere outside Chicago! Certainly not in the soccer stadiums around Rio or Madrid. In the end, it was a meandering pastiche that failed in its fundamental goal of persuading the IOC to vote for Obama's hometown.

So, in sum, Obama was arrogant, thoughtless, and insulted the people he was there to convince with his half-assed presentation. He did more harm than good and diminished the prestige of his office; the criticism he's receiving from all sides is well-deserved.

Extra - Bizarre Q&A responses, too.

More - Legal Insurrection on O's presentation: "It is a speech that could have been delivered at almost any corporate diversity training session, but as a reason to award the Olympics to Chicago and not Rio, it was delusional." Yup.

The moral compass - There's a really interesting book review in the Wall Street Journal on "Souls in Transition" by the aptly named Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith. The upshot appears to be that kids with a strong religious foundation have a better sense of morality and critical thinking; meanwhile, all those godless kids put their belief in "karma."

No freakin' way - UK Telegraph: "Mahmoud Ahmaadinejad revealed to have Jewish past."

Chicag-NO

The Boston Globe had an editorial this morning panning Obama's trip to Copenhagen:

Obama gained support during the presidential campaign by staying cool amid an economic meltdown, while John McCain marched into Washington in an attempt to show a spirit of action. Instead, McCain showed his futility. Americans don’t like to see their leaders appearing rash or weak. If the Olympic committee rejects the president, Obama becomes just another failed salesman. It’s a mistake for him to sink so much into a cause that may not even need his help. He should have stayed home.

We know that now.

Extra - Contentions: "The limits of egomania."

Update - Two separate planes for Barack & Michelle + security detail = 18 votes

The Massachusetts miracle? Not so much

I've posted a dozen posts on the Massachusetts health care reform. Here's one other things to remember from the Christian Science Monitor: the costs of the program are artificially propped up with federal funds

Despite raising state taxes, the Massachusetts plan is kept afloat only by hundreds of millions of dollars of financial waivers and assistance from the federal government – i.e., by the taxpayers of the other 49 states. If the Massachusetts plan were adopted at the national level, it's unlikely that China or Russia would bail out the United States.

This and much more from Dr. Paul Hsieh.

My government spent a trillion dollars on stimulus and all I got was this lousy T-shirt

From the "no kidding, Sherlock" WashPost: "New Economic Reports Show We're Still Hurting"

The fragile economic recovery has relied heavily on government stimulus spending, but new data show that as the money runs out, a sustained rebound may be elusive.

The dramatic decline in sales reported Thursday by the Big Three automakers suggested the extent to which the stimulus act has propped up the economy. The government's wildly popular "Cash for Clunkers" program drove consumer spending to its highest level in eight years in August. But after it ended, so did the growth in auto sales.

General Motors' sales plunged 36 percent in September compared with August. Ford plummeted 37 percent. Chrysler dove 33 percent.

Cash for Clunkers "was a one-time boost of sales followed by a crater," said Ben Herzon, an economist at Macroeconomic Advisers. The firm forecast that the program was likely to have no effect as a stimulant for national economic output.

And in case you missed it: "Stimulus spending doesn't work." Stand by for unemployment numbers tomorrow; Joe Biden will be out later to explain all the jobs "saved."