Speed cameras: Watch out for white Jeeps on the Baltimore Beltway

From the the Sun:

Maryland's drivers should be getting the hint right about now that speeding in highway construction zones will cost them.

Almost 8,800 drivers were given $40 tickets during a six-week period that began Nov. 16, when state officials started photographing vehicles exceeding the speed limit by 12 mph or more on three stretches of highway marked as work zones.

. . .

During the new program's first six weeks, the cameras led to 3,365 citations to vehicles traveling on Interstate 95 between White Marsh Boulevard and I-895; 4,790 around the Charles Street exit of Baltimore's Beltway; and 590 on I-95 in Prince George's County.

I'm very disappointed in Dels. Steve Lafferty and Sue Aumann for supporting the speed cameras. County Councilman Kevin Kamenetz gets a thumbs down too. But kudos to Del. Bill Frank and Sen. Jim Brochin for voting "No".

More from the article:

The cameras are installed in a pair of white Jeeps that rotate among the three locations. Motorists are alerted to the possible presence of the cameras by signs that say, "Speed Photo Enforced: Work Zone."

Why cardio exercise has diminishing returns after a few weeks

J.D. Johannes explains why it's so hard to lose weight by doing only distance running:

How can something so logical as burning more calories through cardiovascular exercise not result in sustained fat loss? The answer is in your body’s ability to adapt to exercise and the complex functions of the hormone cortisol.

To lose weight and firm up muscle tone, one apparently needs to mix in interval/sprint training:

you alternate between periods of high intensity and low intensity. . .
The primary advantage of [this], especially short sprints outdoors, is the recovery/repair signal sent to the muscles. A sprint is almost like a weight lifting set--a short burst of maximal effort involving the fast twitch muscle fibers--followed by a period of rest.

This reasoning matches my experience very well, and agrees nicely with a book I recommend highly, Run Less, Run Faster.

via Glenn

BCPS AIM controversy continues to grow - here's a summary

If you are a Baltimore County Public School parent, please go to Facebook and join the End AIM Now group. The group has grown like a rocket, acquiring almost 1,700 members in two weeks.

AIM stands for "Articulated Instruction Module". It's a pseudo-curriculum and tool for tracking student progress. A strange animal.

Here is my summary of the discussion that's happening on the End AIM Now page. But don't take my word for it. Check it out yourself.

PROBLEMS W/AIM
- Untested
- Confusing - it's another grading system in which "A" is the worst grade
- Confusing - Too much jargon in the items
- Confusing - Items are not sequenced according to how they are taught
- Redundant with existing system
- Time consuming for teachers (high opportunity cost)
- Uneven quality of the content
- Infected w/some politically correct language
- Terrible computer/user interface
- Unintended consequence: many teachers are already planning to quit BCPS to teach in other counties if AIM passes.

PROBLEMS W/THE PLANNING, DESIGN & IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS
- Secret
- No input from teachers & parents
- Dropped in our laps as a surprise in December

PROBLEMS W/BCPS LEADERSHIP
- Arrogance
- Not listening
- Mischaracterizing opposition to AIM
- Atmosphere of fear
- Conflict of interest (one BCPS employee who has a company on the side apparently owns copyrights to the material and stands to make money if BCPS implements AIM.)
- Creepy Kabuki theatre atmosphere of BCPS school board meetings (criticism disappears into the ether ... it's very rare for a citizen commenter to get any reaction or response to complaints made in the comment period. The board tends to sit expressionless. Then the open meeting ends, and they go back to their secret meetings.)

BETTER SOLUTIONS
- Make easy fixes to the existing system first.

POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES IF BCPS AIM "STREAMLINING" COMMITTEE DOES NOT KILL THE PROGRAM BY 1/26
- A dump-the-superintendent campaign or a dump-the-AIM creator campaign.
- Lobbying the governor to appoint anti-AIM board members
- A moral suasion campaign to get interested officials to pressure BCPS leadership (Jim Smith, county council, state legislators)
- Ridicule.

QUESTIONS FOR BCPS LEADERSHIP
- How much teacher time has gone into the program?
- Where has this program been tested? Or are we the guinea pigs?

THINGS TO PREPARE FOR UPCOMING MEETINGS
[See the Facebook group for dates, times and locations.]
- Estimates of budget impact
- Specific instances of shoddy quality (One instance: the Algebra part!! Not a single equation in the whole AIM module. Nary an x or a y or a z. It's not sequenced according to how it is taught. This module is abstract, full of jargon, and very hard for parents to understand.)
- Focused messages.

THE CONTEXT
- Poor economy. Citizens, more than ever, are scrutinizing public servants and trying to figure out which ones to keep and which ones need to go.

A FINAL THOUGHT
At every opportunity, BCPS administrators seem to talk about the latest "Blue Ribbon" school, the number of BCPS schools on the Newsweek list of best high schools, Maryland's #1 ranking among public school systems.

But I've never heard any of them worry about this Forbes article: Best and Worst School Districts for the Buck. Baltimore county is in the bottom ten percent. I suspect that programs like AIM are the reason why.

In light of this, it rankles to hear the superintendent's frequent references to BCPS's "award-winning" budgeting and financial management program. When public servants talk too much about awards, it usually means they don't have much in the way of results to brag about.

The cow whisperer

Gary Jones gets inside the heads of cows that graze on the "perfect pasture".

Martha Coakley, the Amirault case, and the demonization of men in the 1980s.

Check out this article by Radley Balko of the libertarian Reason magazine:

This part stopped me short:

"Despite a parole board’s 5-0 recommendation to grant Gerald Amirault clemency and mounting doubts about the evidence against him, Coakley publicly and aggressively lobbied then-Gov. Jane Swift to deny Amirault relief. Amirault remained in prison."

This case was also known as the Fells Acre Day Care Center case. I remember it vividly from my time in Massachusetts. I remember it as a disaster of a case, marked by countless poor decisions by prosecutors throughout both the trial and its lonnnnng and painful aftermath.

I remember it as a milestone in the rise of day care sex abuse hysteria in the 1980s and think of it still as a tipping point in the demonization of men in our culture.

I remember it as the case that caused a generation of men to view interacting with other people's children as a risk.

It was the case that caused men to hesitate before volunteering at the Y, hesitate before helping out with the girl scout cookie drive, and hesitate before signing up to coach youth sports.

It was the case that caused men to think twice before watching a neighbor's kid, think twice about driving a child's teammate home from practice, and think twice about entering the teaching profession.

It's possible that Balko has somehow gotten it wrong.

But if I still lived in Massachusetts, I wouldn't pull the lever for Martha Coakley until I heard an explanation about her role in the clemency arguments of the Amirault case.

BCPS AIM controversy: Baltimore Sun drops ball, downplays number & passion of AIM opponents

Criticism at Baltimore County school board meetings tends to be muted and depersonalized. When teachers let their passion show in the comment period, the norm is to attack policies but not the integrity of the people behind them.

The striking thing about last night's meeting was the breech of this norm by the last speaker, BCPS math teacher James Beam.

Beam is the organizer of End AIM Now, a Facebook page that has attracted 1,600 members in 11 days. While criticizing AIM, here's what Beam said about Superintedent Joe Hairston:

With the dawn of the Articulated Instruction Module (AIM) we have seen Dr. Hairston ascend to his throne. He no longer works collaboratively with us. Cronies are allowed to make decisions in his absence and we are forced to accept that there is no check against this new found unbridled authority. New policy immediately displaces everything that we have come to believe and trust as best practices.

Meetings are now held in secret, to the point that we cannot find out who is attending them, let alone see a copy of their minutes. Our teachers and administrators are afraid to speak out against this because they fear losing the livelihood that feeds their family.

The outsider has become king. He rules with an iron fist, and we suffer.

The applause following Beam's comments was among the most enthusiastic and prolonged that I've heard at a board meeting.

One thing that mystifies me is the blandness of the Sun's coverage. Here's the bowdlerized soundbite from Beam that Liz Bowie and her editors chose to include:

James Beam, a math teacher from Parkville High School, praised Hairston for some of his previous initiatives. But he said with AIM, "He no longer works collaboratively with us." Beam said the AIM progress reports "should be taken off the table."

Don't they want to sell newspapers?

Ann Miller did a much better job in the Examiner.

It seems to me that Dr. Hairston continues to underestimate the breadth and depth of opposition to AIM.

Hairston blamed the outcry on some ill-informed teachers who he said were blowing the issue out of proportion and wanting to create a controversy where there was none.

"These people are creating the crisis out there," he said.

It's time for him to wake up and smell the coffee.

This BCPS parent thinks James Beam's aim is right on target.

Like so many other states, Maryland seems to have a huge pension problem

Hayley Peterson worries about Maryland's pension problem in the Examiner:

Maryland's $2 billion budget shortfall is chump change compared with the $8 billion in state pension funding lost last year, some lawmakers say.

"The budget problem is completely eclipsed by our state pension system," said Del. Roger Manno, D-Silver Spring. "The numbers are horrific. They are terrifying."

The numbers:

[Maryland's] pension system [is] underfunded by $19 billion . . .

[Maryland has] 350,000 current and retired state workers . . .

The state's pensions are only 65 percent funded

For more on the burgeoning problem of unsustainable government worker pensions, check out Steven Greenhut's new book Plunder: How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation.

Greenhut was talking about the book on on C-SPAN recently.

via Pension Tsunami

"Capitalism" and "crony capitalism" are not the same thing

John Stossel explains the difference.

Juking* the stats: Maryland educrats reduce suspensions . . . and probably make schools more dangerous

Liz Bowie, education reporter for the Sun wrote two weeks ago:

I thought I would leave this good news item for everyone . . . school suspensions [in Maryland have] dropped significantly . . . by 12 percent from the prior year and fell to the lowest point in more than a decade

Unfortunately, Ms. Bowie buried the lede:

school superintendents, such as Andres Alonso in the city, have simply ordered principals to lower suspensions for certain offenses. School systems have stopped suspending students for being truant, for instance.

She should have put scare quotes around the word "trend" in her headline. Redefining criteria for suspensions does not signify a change in student behavior. If this story reveals any trend, it is a rise in the credulousness of Sun paper reporters.

The story also hints at another likely trend: Maryland schools are probably becoming more dangerous because of stat-juking educrats trying to make their suspension statistics look "good".

UPDATE: Ordinary parents and teachers don't seem to be fooled. Here are reader reactions from the first four comments to Bowie's post:

Do any of these agencies expect anyone to accept these statistics at face value?
MrRational

Actually, what I have noticed in Harford County is that children are not getting reprimanded for things that should be.. Like young boys assaulting young girls both verbally and physically and nothing being done about it.
Samara

I've seen some administrators take offenses that are hand book - suspension offenses and provide a slap on the wrist, even when the child has a series of such bad behaviors.
Suzanne

Does anybody believe this crap? Suspensions are down because principals and asst principals are under intense scrutiny and suspension stats happen to be a HUGE topic of discussion during evaluation conferences.
realteacher

*Cedric Daniels, the virtuous police officer from "The Wire", puts the term in context.

How the GOP can start fixing itself

Step #1: "Admit it screwed up."

Jonah Goldberg lays it out:

For too long Republicans confused supporting big business with supporting free markets, when big business is often the biggest impediment to fair competition. Other fresh new ingredients would almost surely include pro-family tax policies and the de-linking of legal and illegal immigration as interchangeable terms.

But first, the GOP needs to admit it screwed up.

UPDATE: John Stossel underscores Jonah's point about big business:

[businessmen] are not natural friends of free markets. They are often first in line for privileges bestowed by the state. That's called "crony capitalism"

The non-profit bubble (continued)

From Deanna Isaacs, writing at ChicagoReader:

. . . former NEA director Bill Ivey [is warning] leaders of nonprofit arts organizations about rampant overgrowth in their field [that] probably can't be sustained. Citing national figures from Americans for the Arts, he noted that their number has mushroomed in the last 40 years, from about 7,700 to more than 40,000. [. . .] He offered some hard-nosed advice on how to deal with it: Abort start-ups and put down the weak sisters, pronto.

An early look at redistricting in Maryland

At RedMaryland.

If you want more-responsive legislators and less polarization in politics--in both the US Congress and the Maryland General Assembly, please tell Governor O'Malley and your state legislators to stop the gerrymandering. It's in their hands.

"Flexitarian"

I never had a name for my eating habits. But now I do, thanks to Gary Jones at Muck & Mystery. I guess I'm a flexitarian.

He's a big fan of grass-fed beef for both health and environmental reasons. I wonder what premium you pay over regular old grain-fed beef. and whether you can buy it at a regular supermarket. Or do you have to go to Whole Foods?

And, can you get grass-fed hamburger too?

A non-profit bubble?

When I googled the phrase "non-profit bubble" in quotes recently, I found an article by Gara LaMarche of The Atlantic Philanthropies, writing last year:

Now we are learning that there has been a "nonprofit bubble," too [. . . and it] has burst . . . Most foundations are working hard just to meet their existing commitments, and many are eliminating staff jobs and trimming other expenses to do so . . .

Gara's prescription for dealing with the situation:

First, foundations must be more rigorous in scrutinizing their own operations and the management and budgets of the groups they support. . .

Second, small groups should consider merging with other like-minded organizations. . .

Third, large nonprofit groups should streamline their operations.

The Nation picked up on her article. And then GrantsPlus picked up on The Nation's article.

Of course, Instapundit was on the case even earlier in 2008.

I think that the "nonprofit" sector has grown out of all proportion because of its tax-exempt status, and we ought to consider eliminating tax exemptions for nonprofits entirely. Failing that, we ought to limit them to organizations that provide direct services to those in need, and only to the extent of such services. The rest is a big subsidy that has created a nonprofit bubble in the economy.

One of Glenn's reader's, Doug Levene, chimed in with a comparison to pre-modern China:

Your comments on the growth of the non profit sector as a refuge from taxation are very important.

As part of my East Asian Studies M.A. at Yale many years ago, I studied a lot of pre-modern Chinese history and one fact that struck me then was the growth of tax-free "religious" institutions to the point where the tax base was severely eroded. Indeed, that was one of the major problems for the Chinese central government, such as it was. I wonder if that is happening in the US generally today? It obviously does happen locally - consider what percentage of the property in Cambridge, Massachusetts is tax exempt. What is the impact nationally? Have any economists or tax lawyers looked at this?

Any thoughts from the economists and tax lawyers out there?

Ellen Sauerbrey's formula for health care reform

Here's her list, from an article she wrote for RedMaryland:

1. Tort reform
2. A tax break for those without employer-based health insurance (e.g. waitresses) that equals the tax break given to those with employer-based insurance (e.g. corporate executives).
3. Allow Maryland citizens to buy health insurance policies in other states (including stripped-down ultra-basic policies that (1) don't cover small, foreseeable expenses, and (2) don't force consumers to pay for the many, many extras mandated by the Maryland General Assembly)
4. Fix the problems in Medicare and Medicaid before expanding them rather than after.

It's a good list.

Recommended by Christopher Hitchens as "the great book" on the American Revolution

In an online interview, Hitchens is asked:

what historical figures, events, movements, or books do you feel have been ignored, or under emphasized, in the public education of young people?

His answer:

The founding of the United States and its emergence as "the world's first and only secular democratic federal republic" is terribly understudied these days.

He goes on:

the great book to read [on the topic] would be Theodore Draper's book Struggle for Power

via Reddit.com

Baltimore County pensions may be a big campaign issue

From the Sun:

Even if the Baltimore County Council revises a generous pension policy that allows officials to retire at full salary after 20 years' service, reformers will continue to demand sweeping changes and the issue will likely dominate the campaign next year, political watchers say.

via Maryland items in Pension Tsunmai

Fuels used by BGE in 2008 to generate electricity for Maryland

Here are the numbers for 2008 by type of fuel (from my December 2009 BGE bill):

]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] coal = 51.2 %
]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] nuclear = 33.2 %
]]] natural gas = 6.4 %
]] renewable* = 4.7 %
]] "system mix"
oil = 0.3 %

This is for the Pennsylvania-New Jersey- Maryland area which BGE calls "PJM".

*The renewable number breaks down like this:

] hydroelectric = 2.8%
] wood/biomass = 1.5%
captured methane gas = 0.3%
solid waste = 0.1%
geothermal = 0 %
wind = 0 %

Obama's "uncertainty tax"

I think the phrase has a good chance of catching on.

When will the left--and the president--learn that there is really very little that government can do to create jobs other than (1) foster a stable, predictable regulatory/tax climate, and (2) get out of the way.

Things like the recent jobs summit are little more than PR blather and window dressing.

ACORN pimp videos: the most troubling response from a Yale alum (4 of 5)

[Previous]

The rudest response to my ACORN post on the Yale listserv didn't bother me as much a private* email from another alum who I'll call "Healthy Discussion." Here's the body of her email in full:

"Your [listserv] email does not provide much room for debate or healthy discussion, and therefore I do not see the merit of your posting on this listserve,
unless your purpose is to offend those who may disagree with you."

The central problem with this email lies in the word "offend." Humor columnist Dave Barry explains what I mean in a video made by the folks at FIRE. He begins (at 1:55) with this observation:

the one place where you'd think free thought and free speech and conflict of ideas would be most encouraged [, the University,] has somehow become the most restricted and constricted and most intellectually constipated area of American life.

Then (at 2:32) he performs a wonderful riff on the O-word:

Any time anyone says that he or she is offended by anything, that's all you have to say--that's the magic word--"I'm offended"--and everybody just backs down and says "Oh my god, we don't want to offend anybody." . . . At some point the right to voice your opinion got trumped, at least in the universities, by the right not to be offended . . . Which makes a complete joke out of the concept of intellectual diversity and intellectual freedom.

Here's the thing about important and difficult topics: you can arrive at a healthy discussion from almost any starting point. But you can't have a healthy discussion if the fear of even mildly offending anyone stifles the discussion before it starts.

TOMORROW: ACORN, Yale and the double standard on free speech


*It was not part of the public listserv conversation.

Eating locally grown food: does it really reduce your carbon footprint?

Probably not, say Christopher L. Weber and H. Scott Matthews of Carnegie Mellon University in a piece on Kiplinger.com:

While locavores often cite “food miles”-- that is, the distance food is shipped to market -- as a reason to eat local . . . transportation accounts for only 11% of total greenhouse-gas emissions associated with food, while 83% is related to production.

I've always been skeptical about the carbon benefits of locally grown food, but I'd never seen numbers before that back up my skepticism.

Adds, Art Carden, an economist at Rhodes College, in Memphis, Tenn:

Produce grown close to home may be fresher and taste better. But food grown where conditions are most auspicious will require less fertilizer, pesticides, labor and investment in tools

Carden continues:

If you really want to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet, cut back on consumption of red meat, which Weber and Matthews say is responsible for producing 150% more greenhouse gases than chicken or fish.

From 10 Green myths debunked at Kiplinger.com.

Five local watershed groups in Baltimore announce plan to merge

From the November newsletters of the Herring Run Watershed Association and the Gwynns Falls Watershed Association:

Executive directors and board representatives from local watershed organizations – Herring Run [Watershed Association], Jones Falls [Watershed Association], Gwynns Falls [Watershed Association], Baltimore Harbor [Watershed Association] and the [Balimore] Harbor Waterkeeper – have met several times during the past several months to evaluate a strategic restructuring involving the five groups. . . .

The five organizations have signed a Good Faith Resolution to move forward toward the goal of evaluating restructuring to form a single organization, focused on water quality issues in the greater Baltimore metropolitan area.

Sounds like a good idea to me as long at they can handle the merger process reasonably quickly and smoothly.

Five organizations merging at once should be a challenge, given that mergers of two can be difficult. So it's probably a good thing that they've hired a consultant with experience in organizational development and restructuring.

Each of the groups has retained the option of withdrawing from the merger if they find that the final arrangements aren't to their liking.

"Human rights are the wrong basis for healthcare"

Congressman Ruppersberger, please take note.

Willam Easterly, an economist at NYU, had a nice op-ed piece in the Financial Times a few weeks ago.

He gives some history and context:

• The notion of a “right to health” has its origins in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
• The [World Health Organization] shifted from pragmatic improvement of health outcomes towards “the universal realisation of the right to health”.
• Even Amnesty International . . . added a new section to its human rights report in 2009 on the “right to health”.
• President Barack Obama recently held a conference call with religious leaders in which he called healthcare “a core ethical and moral obligation”.

Unfortunately, all of these groups--and President Obama--are on the wrong track. Their intentions might be good, but their efforts seem counter-productive:

the global campaign to equalise access to healthcare has had a surprising result: it has made global healthcare more unequal.

Why is the concept of "healthcare as human right" so flawed and problematic?

It is impossible for everyone immediately to attain the “highest attainable standard” of health (as the health rights declaration puts it). So [the question of] which “rights to health” are realised [becomes] a political battle. Political reality is that such a “right” is a trump card to get more resources – and it is rarely the poor who play it most effectively.

The lesson:

The pragmatic approach – directing public resources to where they have the most health benefits for a given cost – [has] historically achieved far more than the moral approach . . .

[The concept of a] “right” [to healthcare] skews public resources towards the most politically effective advocates, who will seldom be the neediest.

The bottom line: those who frame health care as a "right" are serving up empty rhetoric.

Explaining the obvious to Michelle Goldberg

In a diavlog last month on BloggingHeads.tv, Michelle Goldberg claims--with astonishing arrogance, condescension, and superficiality--that she doesn't understand why so many folks are opposed to the health care reform bills (32-second clip):

Some responses to her questions & assertions.

ITEM #1. "Do [Townhall protesters] think the current system is acceptable?"

RESPONSE: No. The people who say at town halls that they are "satisfied" with their current health care plans are probably either (1) healthy younger folks who don't have to deal much with the current system and/or fear that they will have to shoulder more of the burden by subsidizing older folks, or (2) they are retired or soon-to-be-retired folks who fear losing elements of their existing Medicare coverage. Both of these fears are warranted, and people tend to fear losing something they already have more than they relish getting new benefits that they don't already have.

ITEM #2. "The worst part is the paperwork"

RESPONSE: Duh. Most people who have dealt with the system agree that the paperwork is awful. I'm just not confident that reform bills proposed by Democrats will reduce paperwork. Expanding government programs hasn't been a good formula for that in the past.

ITEM #3 "There's lots of misguided love for insurance companies among reform opponents."

RESPONSE: Matt Welch--he's amazingly polite to her--does a terrific job of dismantling this assertion, which is just not true. (Clip below, length 1:58, is different from one above):

ITEM #4. "Jim Wilson [yada yada] Glenn Beck. You can't argue 'death panels' and you can't argue 'totalitarianism' "

RESPONSE: If you revisit Aristotle's Rhetoric--the part on style in Book 3--you'll see that use of metaphors is one of the most powerful and effective methods of persuasion and argument. Opponents of health care reform use the terms "death panel" and "totalitarianism" as metaphors for rationing and encroaching government. Yes, they are gross exaggerations. But these metaphors (especially the death panel one) have touched sensitive nerves in the public. So yes, you actually CAN argue death panels and totalitarianism. And responses to these arguments (from Pelosi et al.) have been weak and unconvincing.

ITEM #5. "Just give me something like the French health care system."

RESPONSE: I'm no expert on the French health care system, but some quick Googling indicates that the French system does not suffer from problems the U.S. has with malpractice insurance, defensive care, and the tort system. This means that one of the key steps for getting us to something like the French system is tort reform. To my knowledge, the current Senate bill does little or nothing to deal with this issue.

ITEM #6. The reasons for opposition are "more psychological than economic".

RESPONSE: This was the most condescending of all her statements. If Michelle had looked to some of the more thoughtful folks presenting alternatives to the reform bills she would have found plenty of economic reasons to criticize the reform bills. I can think of three examples:

I. Check out David Goldhill's piece in the Atlantic Magazine How American Health Care Killed My Father. His suggestions:

• Move away from comprehensive health care as the single model for finance health care.
• Put the consumer, not the government at the center of the system.
• Give government the primary task of bringing greater transparency and competition to the health care industry and directly subsidizing those who can't afford care.
• Fund routine care out-of-pocket (not covered by insurance) so the people who care most about cost--consumers--are in their proper, primary role of trading off price, quality and value.
• Fund massive, unpredictable expenses with insurance.
  
• Replace our current web of employer- and government-based insurance with a single [mandatory] program of catastrophic insurance open to all Americans. . . with fixed premiums based solely on age. . . a single national pool, without underwriting for specific risk factors [that] would ultimately replace Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance. [With a high threshold for defining "catastrophic" at approximately $50,000 or more.] Limit insurance payouts in any year to the amount of available premiums.
• Over time, shift over to funding all non-catastrophic care from an improved, mandatory version of HSAs.
• Fund intermediate level expenses (e.g. appendectomies) just as we do things like new cars: with credit. But allow people to borrow against future deposits into their HSA.

The bottom line for this approach:

Imagine how things might change if more people were buying their health care the way they buy anything else. I’m certain that all the obfuscation over prices would vanish pretty quickly, and that we’d see an end to unreadable bills. And that physicians, who spend an enormous amount of time on insurance-related paperwork, would have more time for patients. . . .

It will do a better job than our current system of controlling prices, allocating resources, expanding access, and safeguarding quality. And it will do a better job than a more government-driven approach of harnessing medicine’s dynamism to develop and spread the new knowledge, technologies, and techniques that improve the quality of life. We won’t be perfect consumers, but we’re more likely than large bureaucracies to encourage better medicine over time.

II. Dr. Peter Weiss of Medically Incorrect makes many of the same points in this video. Dr. Weiss's prescription for reform includes the following items:

1. Increase competition among insurance companies by allowing them to compete across state lines.
2. Allow people to buy health insurance through affinity groups like AAA or Costco without regard to pre-existing conditions (just as employees get insurance through large employers).
3. For employees who lose their jobs, allow them to buy COBRA insurance at the employer was paying (not the double or triple rate that COBRA charges).
4. Strive for major illness insurance. Insurance is meant for catastrophes, not for everyday expense. Make people pay out of their own pocket for small predictable expense like office visits and PAP smears.
5. Have a system where consumer must take ownership of expenses (because cost is the main culprit, not access or quality).

III. Then, there's Congressman/Doctor Tom Price's alternative bill titled Empower Patients First (H.R. 3400). It suggests:

• Fix the unfairness in the tax treatment of health insurance by extending a tax credit or deduction to those without employer-sponsored insurance;
• Use automatic enrollment, with a right to “opt out” of health insurance coverage, and promote defined-contributions for employer plans, instead of using government coercion and mandates, to expand coverage;
• Establish health plan portals in the states so that patients can own and control their own health insurance;
• Offer low-income Americans the option of a voucher to purchase private coverage; and
• Give states incentives to experiment with how best to cover high cost individuals.

The full clip on health care is here (length 10:52):

R.I.P. Mr. Hallett

Very sad news. The Sun has a very nice article:

Robert Hallett, a longtime Baltimore County school librarian who invented a spandex-clad superhero to motivate children to read, died Monday of a rare form of leukemia. . .

his library became a world designed to captivate the students coming through his doors - something he succeeded in doing so well that many remember his magic tricks and the oddities he placed around the room, including a clock with backward numbers, years after they left the school. . . .

For about two decades, he spent Friday and Saturday evenings singing on the street corner outside the Pikesville restaurant Jilly's when the weather was nice, his wife said. . .

"He's a guy that just spread joy to everybody he came in touch with," said his twin brother, Norman Hallett of Florida. "It started as a little kid, and it ran all the way through Riderwood."

If a DaVinci Code symbologist analyzed the cover art for the Danish cartoons book...

. . . he'd notice that the cover has a thought balloon on it, not a speech balloon. It's an apt way to symbolize Yale's censorship of Jytte Klausen. On the forlorn, empty cover she seems trapped speechless inside the balloon.

Here's my interpretation of the cover: the balloon represents the thinking of Klausen's readers. They are non-plussed as they consider her censored situation when they should be engrossed in the subject of the book itself: the Mohammad cartoons .

And here's an idea for the Yale Press: when the paperback comes out, change the balloon to a scream. It would represent the feelings of readers who believe the cartoons should never have been removed from the book.

Another disappointing aspect of this case: apparently many of those who argued for censorship had not read the book.

Related post here.

Debunking ACORN apologists

Listed below are some common defenses of ACORN followed by rebuttals.

Defense #1: Some of the ACORN people were "playing along" with what they thought were pranks.

Rebuttal: Even if this is true, ACORN still looks unethical on many levels. I saw no hints of "playing along" in any of the videos.

Defense #2: ACORN was responding to unethical practices of banks during the housing crisis.

Rebuttal: Two wrongs don't make a right. Moreover, the root causes of the housing crisis probably lie within government, not business. Check out the 1994 hearings on Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac.

Defense #3: James O'Keefe had racist motives for creating the videos.

Rebuttal: The O'Keefe-as-racist meme gained traction through a Washington Post story written by Darryl Fears and Carol D. Leonnig. The Post later made a retraction. Andrew Breitbart spoke to Leonnig before the article came out, and he predicted accurately that she would unfairly inject race into the story. (Go to 1:05 of the video.)

Defense #4: "Hapless" ACORN employees were caught in a politically motivated sting.

Rebuttal: Breitbart dismantles the "hapless" (a.k.a. "dumdum") argument very effectively (go to 2:30 of the video).

Defense #5: ACORN has done good things in the past.

Rebuttal: Even if ACORN has done "amazing" work elsewhere--a contention that I have doubts about--the pimp videos should serve as a wake-up call that triggers skepticism and scrutiny of all ACORN operations, past and present.

Scholarship, slogans and not-so-free speech at Yale

I drove through New Haven yesterday.

Being curious about the recently released (and censored) book on the Danish Mohammed cartoons, I stopped in at the Yale Bookstore to see how sales were coming along and to take a look at the book.

The cover of the book is dull, sadly so. It has no art except a lonely "thought balloon". I was also struck by the huge banner on the front wall . I found the juxtaposition of censored book and slogans to be a bit troubling:



A customer service person looked up recent sales on the computer for me. The store had sold only two copies in the past two weeks.

Today, the book was #55,400 on Amazon.

Ryan Mauro to political Right: Don't overdo criticism of President Obama

One key point that Mauro doesn't mention: overdoing it devalues one's criticism it and often makes it less effective.

He points this out:

The Nation Brands Index now ranks the United States as the most admired country around the world* . . .

“What’s really remarkable is that in all my years studying national reputation, I have never seen any country experience such a dramatic change in its standing as we see for the United States for 2009,” said Simon Anholt, the founder of the NBI.

Mauro's opening paragraphs resonated strongly with me:

I can remember the disgust I felt between 2001 and 2008 when so many critics of President Bush couldn’t bring themselves to applaud anything he did, instead only grinding their teeth as they mentioned his name. If boxed into a corner and forced into commending something, such as the overthrow of the Taliban, it would not be said without hateful prefaces and postscripts about how evil, dumb, incompetent, radical, etc. he is.

This pride-filled childishness, intellectual unfairness, and overall resistance to acknowledge any success propelled me to promise myself that I’d never adopt the same attitude, would remain as independent as possible so as not to be seduced by the partisan rage, and would take pride in supporting my president whenever I felt comfortable doing so.

Bush Derangement Syndrome was counter-productive for the country **, and so is knee-jerk dumping on President Obama. Criticism of President Bush's environmental record is a good example of exaggeration from the Left. The Right needs to avoid this kind of thing.

Well done, Ryan.

via Instapundit


*A dubious achievement, perhaps, but notable nevertheless.
**It damaged the credibility of the Left as well

Bulls-eye ... Tru dat ... Spot on ... Ay-uh

Calvin Trillin has a one-sentence explanation of why the financial system nearly collapsed last year:

"because smart guys had started working on Wall Street.”

Nice one, Calvin.

Free home energy audits in Baltimore from BGE

Sign up at BgeSmartEnergy.com. It includes free CFLs, pipe insulation, shower head, etc.

Characteristics of Alinsky's ideal community organizer

Here they are, as listed in Rules for Radicals:

1. Curiosity
2. Irreverence
3. Imagination
4. A sense of humor
5. A bit of a blurred vision of a better world
6. An organized personality
7. A well-integrated political schizoid
8. Ego [but not egotism]
9. A free and open mind and political relativity

Only a few of these require much explanation.

The "blurred vision of a better world" (#5) means the ability to see the whole picture of Alinsky's "better world" even when the organizer is immersed in--and working to organize--just a tiny part.

What he means by "integrated schizoid" in #7 is this:

. . . the organizer must split himself into two parts--one part in the arena of action where he polarizes the issue to 100 to nothing, and helps to lead his forces into conflict, while the other part knows that when the time comes for negotiations that it really is only a 10 percent difference--and yet both parts have to live comfortably with each other. Only a well-organized person can split and yet stay together. But this is what the organizer must do.

By "political relativity" in #9, Alinsky is referring to: (1) flexibility of personality, (2) rejection of ideology and dogma, (3) being comfortable with uncertainty, and (4) recognition that "all values are relative."

One thing that surprised me about Alinsky's thinking was his rejection of ideology and dogma, including socialism and Marxism.

SunshineReview.org: Baltimore County's rates only C- in government transparency

Where our county government falls down:

• Meeting minutes and agendas not posted online
• Does not disclose if belongs to taxpayer-funded lobbying associations.
• Information on how to make a public records request is not provided on the site.
• Current contracts are not listed online

Are you listening, Jim Smith? It would be nice if Mr. Smith could bump up the grade a few notches before term limits end his tenure as county executive in 2010.

Here's the main site for SunshineReview.org.

Saul Alinsky's 11 rules on "the ethics of means and ends"

Alinsky's list of 13 tactics for community organizing have gotten more press lately, but his 11 rules on means and ends are just as thought-provoking:

1. One's concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's personal interest in the issue.
2. The judgment of the ethics of means is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgment
3. In war the ends justify almost any means
4. Judgment must be made in the context of the times in which the action occurred and not from any other chronological vantage point.
5. Concern with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa.
6. The less important the end to be desired, the more one can afford to engage in ethical evaluations of means.
7. Generally success or failure is a might determinant of ethics.
8. Morality of a means depends upon whether the means is being employed at a time of imminent defeat or imminent victory.
9. Any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical.
10. You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.
11. Goals must be phrased in general terms like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," "Of the Common Welfare," "Pursuit of Happiness," or "Bread and Peace."

Alinky's intelligence, his pragmatism, and his impulse to describe things as they are remind me of Niccolo Machiavelli.

Source: Alinsky's 1971 book titled Rules for Radicals

"I know that. You think I don't know that?"

Martin Short reveals the inspiration for his cigarette-puffing lawyer character Nathan Thurm:



via The Daily Beast

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, and what he should do with it

Mickey Kaus nails it.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds has a survey of reactions.

Asian "stink bugs" migrate to Baltimore County via Pennsylvania

I've seen a few of these around and wondered what they were. Susan Reimer explains in the Sun:

[This] variety of stink bug . . . is Halyomorpha halys, which arrived in Southeastern Pennsylvania from Asia in the mid-1990s and has kind of hitchhiked its way into Maryland since.

It is different from the several species of domestic stink bugs that are more uniform in color, less numerous and less of a danger to crops.

This species is distinguished by its patterned legs, antennae and shield-shaped back. . . .

Unlike the domestic stink bug, which is not a threat to crops, this species favors stone fruit trees, such as peach and cherry, and legume crops, such as soybean.

"We have been seeing crop damage in stone fruits in New Jersey and Pennsylvania," said Dr. Michael Raupp, professor of entomology with the University of Maryland. "And we are starting to see it in soybeans."

"Classical liberalism" in a nutshell

Classical liberalism is pretty close to what I mean by "liberal-tarian conservatism". Here are 12 key ideas that help define the concept:

1. Dignity of the individual
2. Individual liberty
3. Private property
4. Natural law and natural rights
5. Freedom of the press, freedom of speech
6. Limited government
7. Rule of law
8. Religious toleration
9. Domestic free markets and international free trade
10. Peace and harmony
11. The right of "exit"
12. Ideas of spontaneous order

This list seems to differ somewhat from the Wikipedia entry. Here's a syllabus and reading list.

Source: Mario Rizzo, NYU Economics Department

Kingman Brewster + Hakimullah Mehsud = Yale Taliban again

Someone recently showed me Kingman Brewster's advice on how to select Yale students. Apparently, its a famous letter, at least within the Yale community. It's a great read for admissions directors and also for college applicants.

Then this morning I found that Hakimullah Mehsud, chief of the Pakistani Taliban, is still alive.

This made me think of the Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, aka the Yale Taliban.

The Yale admissions folks could have saved themselves a boatload of bad publicity if they had just looked at their own website when considering Hashemi and applied their own admissions criteria:

Fourth, moral concern and consideration for others has its place high in the list of attributes worthy of reward. Not only should demonstrated amorality and selfishness be held against an applicant no matter how bright he may seem, but outstanding public motivation and capacity to sacrifice the self for something larger seems to me to deserve positive appreciation in the admissions process.

. . .

"Moral concern and consideration for others" is almost impossible to weigh in the competitive terms which the admissions process requires. However there may be some cases where its demonstration has been so dramatic or objectively convincing as to deserve reward. On the negative side a demonstrated failure of moral sensitivity or regard for the dignity of others cannot be redeemed by allegations that the young man is extremely "interesting."

Cause of obesity? The yin-yang of spring and fall fats

Amazing if true department. Susan Allport author of The Queen of Fats, writes:

the essential fats—the omega-3s and their close cousins, the omega-6s—change with the seasons. It might sound like a small idea, but it may soon fundamentally change the way you think about food.

Omega-3s:

are likely the most abundant fats in the world, but they don't originate in fish, as many believe. Rather, they are found in the green leaves of plants. Fish are full of omega-3s because they eat phytoplankton [...] and seaweed. [...] The spring fats speed up metabolism. They are fats that animals (humans included) use to get ready for times of activity, like the mating season. They're found in the highest concentrations in all the most active tissues: brains, eyes, hearts, the tails of sperm, the flight muscles of hummingbirds. [...] These fats protect our brains from neurological disorders and enable our hearts to beat billions of times without incident.

Omega-6s:

originate in plants as well, but in the seeds of plants rather than the leaves. The fall fats are simply storage fats for plants.

Yin-yang:

Animals require both—omega-3s and omega-6s—in their diets and their tissues. But omega-6s are slower and stiffer than omega-3s. Plus, they promote blood clotting and inflammation, the underlying causes of many diseases, including heart disease and arthritis. Omega-3s, on the other hand, promote blood flow and very little inflammation, which may prevent things like heart disease. The proper mix of these two fats helps create tissue with the right amount of blood flow and inflammation.

The imbalance:

because they're in constant competition to enter our cells, if your diet consists of too many omega-6s, your body will be deficient in omega-3s. And that is what's been happening to us as we've been eating more and more seed fats in the form of soybean, corn and other vegetable oils.

The problem & the result:

Since 1909, according to the USDA, Americans have more than doubled their daily intake of omega-6s—from about 7 grams to around 18. One hundred years ago, heart disease was much less common in this country. Over the past century, though, heart disease has risen in tandem with our increasing intake of these seed fats, or omega-6s, according to the American Heart Association (AHA). So have neurological disorders like Lisa's, as well as depression, arthritis, obesity, insulin resistance and many cancers.

I don't know if all of this is true or not, but it sure seems to make sense to me, and probably Occam too.

Allport gives advice at the end of the article on how to increase Omega-3s and reduce Omega-6s in your diet.

Via Glenn Reynolds