Detailed Abstractions

Come on…. we can’t find any good justices to nominate to SCOTUS?  This is what… the third (including the previous administration) uninspired justice nominated in just 5 years.

For such a prestigious and life long appointment, we should expect much better (via Cato here):

Elena Kagan, President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, seemed to shock many people when she dodged questions about the Declaration of Independence during her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee…

DA posts here & here

Via Freakanomics here, which will hopefully put to rest the idea that nurses go on strike to “help” patients, from the NBER paper:

…Controlling for hospital-specific heterogeneity, patient demographics and disease severity, the results show that nurses’ strikes increase in-hospital mortality by 19.4% and 30-day readmission by 6.5% for patients admitted during a strike, with little change in patient demographics, disease severity or treatment intensity….

Robert Reich via Salon.com here demonstrates once again how much politics effects his economic analysis.  According to him, this whole economic mess, including a potential backslide can be blamed solely on deregulation:

…starting in the late 1970s, and with increasing fervor over the next three decades, government did just the opposite. It deregulated and privatized. It increased the cost of public higher education and cut public transportation. It shredded safety nets…

Which he believes is causing greater wage disparities:

…We’re back to the same ominous trend as before the Great Recession: a larger and larger share of total income going to the very top while the vast middle class continues to lose ground….

Because with deregulation, of course, companies can become EVIL:

…Companies were allowed to slash jobs and wages, cut benefits and shift risks to employees (from you-can-count-on-it pensions to do-it-yourself 401(k)s, from good health coverage to soaring premiums and deductibles)….

I submit what Mr. Reich fears is freedom – freedom of business owners to hire and fire as they wish, freedom of employees to change jobs easily (401K allows this, pension does not), just freedom.

Secondarily, you can see in his writing that the only thing the government has ever done wrong, is by not getting involved enough.  He doesn’t mention government meddling, deficit spending, enormous new health care expenses, entirely new federal agencies which more money will be needed, idiotic regulations like a moratorium on all oil drilling due to one company’s failure….

Nope, for Mr. Reich, it’s all because the government hasn’t taken enough control over the little people.

Via Cato here, more news on the Obama Administration’s transparency:

The Social Security’s trustees’ annual report is, by law, supposed to be published by April 1. This year, however, the trustees have postponed its release indefinitely. The program’s financial condition continues to remain hidden from public view — and by many accounts will continue to be so until the end of the fiscal year….

Wonder if Reich views this as an issue?

The 9th Circuit strikes again…. via LA Times (here):

SAN FRANCISCO — A sharply divided federal appeals court in California on Monday exposed Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to billions of dollars in legal damages when it ruled a massive class action lawsuit alleging gender discrimination over pay for female workers can go to trial….

Now I don’t claim to be a lawyer and haven’t even played one on tv, but part of the dissent seems obvious to me:

…Judge Sandra Ikuta wrote a blistering dissent, joined by four of her colleagues.

“No court has ever certified a class like this one, until now. And with good reason,” Ikuta wrote. “In this case, six women who have worked in thirteen of Wal-Mart’s 3,400 stores seek to represent every woman who has worked in those stores over the course of the last decade — a class estimated in 2001 to include more than 1.5 million women.”…

Maybe they like being overturned (here from 2007)?

…The 9th Circuit also has a long-running streak as the most overturned, which went unbroken this year. The Supreme Court reviewed 22 cases from the 9th Circuit last term, and it reversed or vacated 19 times….

Via WSJ, The Big Brown Union Bailout

If you can’t beat ‘em, have Congress hobble ‘em. That’s the motto of some in corporate America, and Exhibit A might be United Parcel Service’s campaign to get Washington to impose its labor woes on rival Federal Express. This would be one more union bailout at the expense of business competition and economic efficiency….

This is a continuation of this administration’s policies to pay off unions at the expense of others (DA posts here).

Via Reason.com, GM’s Phony Bailout Payback

Uncle Sam gave GM $49.5 billion last summer in aid to finance its bankruptcy….  So when Whitacre publishes a column with the headline, “The GM Bailout: Paid Back in Full,” most ordinary mortals unfamiliar with bailout minutia would assume that he is alluding to the entire $49.5 billion. That, however, is far from the case….

I say if you want to buy American, buy Ford – no bailout money and still going strong.

& cool science news via e!Science (here):

…In a study published as an Advance Online Publication in the journal Nature Nanotechnology on Sunday, physicists at Ohio University and the University of Hamburg in Germany present the first images of spin in action….

This year is really a banner year for the unions.  Recently, they begin early pushing the Obama administration to pass the double-speak entitled bill, the Employee Free Choice Act (which actually removes individual free choice - here @DA).

Not content with simply removing your right to vote anonymously and thereby reduce your freedom of association, they went to the state level.  There they decided that individual business owners can now be forced by law into the union (here @ WSJ):

…A year ago in December, Ms. Berry and more than 40,000 other home-based day care providers statewide were suddenly informed they were members of Child Care Providers Together Michigan—a union created in 2006 by the United Auto Workers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees….

& obviously they are doing this for a reason:

…Today the Department of Human Services siphons about $3.7 million in annual dues to the union—from the child-care subsidies….

But not to worry, the union is doing something with all that money.  More lobbying:

…Ms. Berry now sees money once paid to her go to a union that does little for her. She says she is “self employed and wants nothing to do with the union.”

The union claims it is working for Ms. Berry and others like her by pressing the legislature to increase child-care payments….

For the score keepers at home – the government through union lobbying has forced (by law) private citizens running their own commercial enterprise to pay dues, which they graciously will remove from their state reimbursed child-care subsidy checks…. all in order to lobby the government to raise the child-care subsidy.

For the union organization itself though – lobbying dollars spent pays off.  Also from earlier this year, during bankruptcy of large companies involving unions, they got paid first (here @ DA):

…Now we have POTUS playing politics with the rule of law.  Ensuring money goes to unions before secured creditors, the same unions who are using that money to buy up assets of the companies they helped to bankrupt….

The unions and their elected representatives of course are playing the game as designed and currently played by the voters.   The unions know based upon their membership and war chest they can affect the outcome of an election.  The leaders they help get elected know this and therefore craft union friendly legislation.

Effectively the unions moved away from an organization championing workers’ rights, into another corporation using the government to ensure their continued existence.  & by doing so, they will ultimately raise the cost of doing business for everyone, including the working families they claim to support.

As always in a representative government, the voters are ultimately to blame.  Whether their failure is due to an inability to care, critically think, understand basic economic incentives, or lack of equilibrium between the moons of Venus & Neptune…

Irregardless of why, given the current state of incentives and voters unwillingness to punish their legislators, unions will continue to rent-seek at the expense of the average  citizen.

In what has to be a of the sign of the coming apocalypse, Juan Williams is now defending Rush Limbaugh (video).

While debating Warren Ballentine on the O’Reilly Factor, Juan Williams defended Rush Limbaugh against the constant attacks since the public caught wind of his potential investment in the St. Louis Rams.

Apparently a combination of the celebrity culture that is today’s professional sports and the proclaimed self-righteousness of the NFL, their players’ union and professional race “leaders” can actually lead to a temporary peace deal between  Rush & Juan.

That’s only part of the story – the rest of the story should be the blatant hypocrisy of an organization which demonstrates regularly that it could care less about real criminal acts, much less controversial statements from within their ranks.

The easiest example for analyzing the league’s value system based upon their actions is Michael Vick.  Giving this guy a job after he was convicted of torturing animals to death for their unwillingness or inability to fight very well was a calculated decision about money.  But that’s really just the start of the NFL’s long tradition of tolerating and enabling criminals.

It seems we can’t go more than a couple weeks without a players getting arrested for drinking and driving.  For example, the St. Louis Rams are still allowing Leonard Little to play football, even after killing someone in a drunk driving incident which he followed up with another DWI (here) arrest.

Even more recently the Rams have shown a complete disregard for the community by their willingness to take a firm stand on behalf of players killing innocent citizens.  Ignoring their past problems, they thought it might be a good idea to bring on a new player with prior DUIs.

No worries to the citizens of St. Louis though, according to the Ram’s GM, he passed the “character” test during background investigations.   I’m sure the friends and family of the deceased are glad to know this player received the all important, “I looked into his eye and saw his character” test.

Of course it’s not just the Rams.  Let’s not forget Dante Stallworth recently entered into the “NFL players who  killed innocent people” club as well.

& as NFL traditions go, drinking and driving is just one of the time honored ones.  Another tradition  is using their strength to assault others.   Domestic violence seems to be the most popular  form of this tradition (here, here, & here), including the amazing amount of courage it takes to beat your babys’ momma with an aluminum mop handle while the kids watch (here).

As bad as all that is by itself, this information truly is a very small percentage of the NFL’s actions as it relates to criminal behavior within their ranks.   The endless stream of examples includes all types of crime including assaulting cops, assaulting security guards, shootings, drug rings, weapon’s charges,  probation violations, coaches assaulting other coaches, and even just plain ole indecent exposure – which in some cases can result in a being forced to register as  sex offender.  There are literally so many available examples of NFL players’ crimes, it’s challenging to pick and choose enough examples to be convincing, while ensuring this post doesn’t end up longer than the health care bill.

Indeed, so much information exists that at least one website is dedicated to tracking it (NFL Crimes News Blog).   A while back they even promised to take down their entire site if they could go 60 days without seeing an arrest posted on ProFootballTalk police blotter.  The closest they’ve gotten is 29 days.

The basic point?  For an organization with such a demonstrable history of ignoring and enabling real crime, their attempt to come off as self-righteous based on someone’s past comments is another perfect example of style over substance.  It would almost be amusing if it didn’t show how shallow our celebrity obsessed culture can be.

Standard Libertarian Disclaimer:  As a private business the NFL can pick and chose its investors at will.  I really don’t care all that much that the NFL pulled Rush’s bid nor would I ever want to take away their rights to do so.

Of course as a corollary to their freedom to chose their investors, we all have the freedom to point out the hypocrisy of such a decision.  When the NFL, the players, and the players’ union collectively run around throwing matches at people while they know full well they are standing in a house full of gun powder & explosives, they deserve nothing more than ridicule.

With the state of Missouri’s recent fiscal problems and a 9.4% unemployment rate, the state worker’s union has decided now is the time to act.

Questions for the unions:  Is it time to cut back?  Become more lean?  Follow the rest of private industry and cut back as revenue growth loses momentum?

Union’s answer:  Surely ye jest!  We’re the union & the time is ripe for a pay raise!

That’s correct.  As the entire state population spends less money to try to tread water in these tight times, the unions apparently believe they are in prime position to negotiate:

…The union has proposed a 6 percent annual pay raise for the next three years and a “fair share” fee for nonunion members who are covered by union-negotiated contracts. The negations are over a contract for patient care support workers that expired in June and one for craft and maintenance employees that expired in December.

But wait!  Ask them nicely and they’ll tell you that they only have the best of intentions:

Curt Ostrander, the union’s chief negotiator, told The Associated Press that the union’s priority is protect state workers, address staff shortages and help people do their jobs better. He described discussions with the state thus far as “cooperative,” and said the two sides are trying to find ways to be more efficient to save money and solve problems.

“Our top priorities are to provide a contract that gives workers the necessary protection in order for them to perform their jobs in a safe, effective manner and to provide state services,” Ostrander said….

For those MBA’s out there – please note the very sound logic incorporated in “address staff shortages and become more efficient to save money” while simultaneously asking for a 6% raise for the next 3 years during a recession.

The audacity it takes to ask the tax payers of this state to pony up 6% annual raises, while many in the state can’t or won’t get a raise at all this year, is pompous and arrogant.

This combined with them selling the money grab as something that will reduce costs, while increasing staff, is completely disingenuous.

To be fair, this is an opening gambit and it’s not likely they’ll get everything (though the governor is pro-union), but if we continue to allow our elected leaders and unelected leaders (read: special interests) to operate within side the quiet world of doublespeak without so much as a whimper of an objection, then we surely are going to get exactly what we deserve.

Read all about government wages versus free market wages in The Great Recession here

Take a dash of holy water here, sprinkle a little public policy there and voila!  Socialism.

Through the Vatican pulpit, the Pope is now giving out political advice based on Marx’s idea of collectivism.  In a letter from the Pope (here), it begins with:

Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity.

Finally gets to this:

From the social point of view, systems of protection and welfare, already present in many countries in Paul VI’s day, are finding it hard and could find it even harder in the future to pursue their goals of true social justice in today’s profoundly changed environment. The global market has stimulated first and foremost, on the part of rich countries, a search for areas in which to outsource production at low cost with a view to reducing the prices of many goods, increasing purchasing power and thus accelerating the rate of development in terms of greater availability of consumer goods for the domestic market. Consequently, the market has prompted new forms of competition between States as they seek to attract foreign businesses to set up production centres, by means of a variety of instruments, including favourable fiscal regimes and deregulation of the labour market. These processes have led to a downsizing of social security systems as the price to be paid for seeking greater competitive advantage in the global market, with consequent grave danger for the rights of workers, for fundamental human rights and for the solidarity associated with the traditional forms of the social State. Systems of social security can lose the capacity to carry out their task, both in emerging countries and in those that were among the earliest to develop, as well as in poor countries. Here budgetary policies, with cuts in social spending often made under pressure from international financial institutions, can leave citizens powerless in the face of old and new risks; such powerlessness is increased by the lack of effective protection on the part of workers’ associations. Through the combination of social and economic change, trade union organizations experience greater difficulty in carrying out their task of representing the interests of workers, partly because Governments, for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labour unions.

So in the fine tradition of charities everywhere, the Pope seems to believe it to incumbent on governments to promote social spending, at the expense of others of course, and work towards ensuring workers’ unions.  I realize he wasn’t directly discussing the US, but the unions are part of the reason GM went under, therefore part of the reason there is less money to spend on social programs and more need for them in Detroit.

The Democrats of course believe the Pope’s pleas of economic justice falls directly in line with President Obama’s policies (here):

…The Pope “has provided a road map for how we can move ahead to accomplish economic justice,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut. She is a Catholic member of the House Democratic leadership who has a 100 percent rating from the Washington-based Americans for Democratic Action, which describes itself as the “nation’s oldest independent liberal political organization.”

DeLauro and Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts yesterday opened a campaign of Catholic Democrats called “Pope Greets Hope” to draw a link between Church doctrine and Obama’s policy agenda. Obama will discuss the pontiff’s economic message with the Pope today, said White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs…

It’s not really a large shock that the Catholic Church’s very teachings, lean towards, or even completely agree, with the philosophy that is socialism, I think the news here is having Democrats openly agree with socialistic policies without even a hint that their country doesn’t want any part of it.

Here, here, & here -  Americans do not want more spending or larger government, but when your ideas are righteous and going only to promote the new utopia, little things like citizens’ opinions, many failed attempts for this perfection in history, facts, or really anything else.

As much as liberals like the chastise the religious right as being too dogmatic and anti-science, they surely do believe in the miracle of policies that have been shown to fail time and time again.

Since the Cap & Trade bill is getting hammered from quite a few angles throughout the halls of Congress, recent news has started pushing the much fated plan for Health Care.

They do this, by first admitting the need to increase the insured, the move to hyping the number of uninsured individuals, and finally discuss plans on how to insure them.

For serious thought – Cato and others have noted that the system itself is creating our current problems and by expanding the current system, we will only expand those problems(here):

A free-market approach would move away from employer-provided insurance and increase competition among both insurers and health providers.

Going further of course, they try to give some reasons the system operates as it does:

There are two key components to any free-market healthcare reform. First, we need to move away from a system dominated by employer-provided health insurance and instead make health insurance personal and portable, controlled by the individual rather than government or an employer.

Employment-based insurance hides much of the true cost of healthcare to consumers, thereby encouraging overconsumption. It also limits consumer choice, because employers get the final say in what type of insurance a worker will receive. It means that people who don’t receive insurance through work are put at a significant and costly disadvantage. And, of course, it means that if you lose your job, you are likely to end up uninsured.

Changing from employer-provided to individually purchased insurance requires changing the tax treatment of health insurance. The current system excludes the value of employer-provided insurance from a worker’s taxable income. However, a worker purchasing health insurance on his own must do so with after-tax dollars. This provides a significant financial reward for those who have employer-provided insurance. That should be reversed….

Not to be locked out, John Stossel just wrote a piece over at Reason giving the reader very colorful examples of how the current insurance system has actually done more harm to having efficient and cost effective medical care than any other piece of legislation on health care (here)

…Insurance, whether private or a government Ponzi scheme like Medicare, means third parties pay the bills. When someone else pays, costs always go up.

Imagine if you had grocery insurance. You wouldn’t care how much food cost. Why shop around? If someone else were paying 80 percent, you’d buy the most expensive cuts of meat. Prices would skyrocket.

That’s what health insurance does to medical care. Patients rarely even ask what anything costs. Doctors often don’t know. Often nobody even gives a damn. Patients rarely ask, “Is that MRI really necessary? Is there a cheaper place?” We consume without thinking.

By contrast, in areas of medicine where most patients pay their own way, service gets better, while prices fall.

Take plastic surgery and Lasik eye surgery: Because patients shop around and compare prices, doctors work hard to win their business. They often give customers their cell-phone numbers. Service keeps increasing, but prices don’t. “In every other field of medicine, the price is going up faster than consumer prices in general,” says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis. “But the price of Lasik surgery, on average, has gone down by 30 percent.”

And honestly, I encourage everyone to read what they can, because this is the very beginning.  Through an extensive societal system, we limit the number of doctors graduating each year.  We, by law, force doctors to do certain procedures lesser trained individuals might be able to do for my less money.  If you recall, 10 years ago, a fully registered nurse (RN) had to draw blood.  Now, it’s a 6 week course and they’re called phlebotomy techs.

So yes, Mr. Obama: I and millions think our health care is pretty good, but could use some changes.  We just don’t think the government has proven to be more inefficient in any endeavor when compared to a private company has in that same endeavor (excluding government allowed monopolies).

The only real question – is why are we looking for several trillion dollars, which will be pushed into all these different feel good remedies, most of which will show no measurable improvement?

And therein lies the selectorate theory, which basically reads that heads of states and other major players got to their positions of power through a winning coalition of others and those are the people they will be the first to covet.

As for those people that didn’t vote for Mr. Obama, and are therefore not in the winning coalition, well, they’ll get hurt.  It’s just too bad that my daughter someday will feel the pain from not being apart of that winning coalition, even though she was completely unable to vote.

There’s an article well worth reading at the Economist discussing the Obama’s administration flagrant dismissal of current bankruptcy laws (here).

…Bankruptcies involve dividing a shrunken pie. But not all claims are equal: some lenders provide cheaper funds to firms in return for a more secure claim over the assets should things go wrong. They rank above other stakeholders, including shareholders and employees. This principle is now being trashed…

..The Treasury has also put a gun to the heads of GM’s lenders. Unsecured creditors owed about $27 billion are being asked to accept a recovery rate of 5 cents, says Barclays Capital, whereas the health-care trust, which ranks equal to them, gets 50 cents as well as a big stake in the restructured firm. If creditors refuse to co-operate, the government will probably seek to squash them using the same fast-track legal process…

Since Obama, and his proponents, call him a Constitutional scholar I assume it would be nothing new to him to understand how in our history bankruptcy laws came to be.

During the time of the founding fathers, they left an oppressive country to find freedom.  One of the key pieces of oppression they wanted to stamp out in the New World was debtor’s prison and debt inheritance; where one bad decision could affect generations of family members.

They learned by the errors of the Old Country, that not only did the old way overly favor the creditors, but it also slowed down investment and innovation.

It’s pretty easy and intuitive to understand why this would be.  Anyone taking a loan today to start a new business knows the worst possible result will be bad credit for a limited time and potential seizure of assets to pay back creditors.  This is obviously a lot less intimidating for entrepreneurs than the potential consequences in the Old Country freeing up more people to push for more success.

Creditors also know how to manage their risk based upon the current laws.  For instance, secured creditors get first shot at monetary recover, lowering their risk, while unsecured creditors have a higher risk and are further down the line.

& all of this worked.  The brilliance is not only in how & why the laws were fashioned over time, but also the consistency to which these laws were implemented.

In our own history, many success stories of pioneers in this or that industry had all been bankrupt at one time or another.  Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Benjamin Franklin, and many others, whose innovations we might have never have seen under old bankruptcy standards.

The founding fathers even found it so important, they codified the ability to enact uniform bankruptcy laws in  Article One, Section Eight of the United States Constitution.  While they did still hold to debtor’s prison for a little while, it was stamped out completely in mid 1800′s. (though today for various debts you can still be jailed, such as debts acquired through fraud or failing to pay child support)

Now we have POTUS playing politics with the rule of law.  Ensuring money goes to unions before secured creditors, the same unions who are using that money to buy up assets of the companies they helped to bankrupt.

As has been a constant refrain of mine in this blog over the past few weeks (or is it 100 days?), when the ends justify the means, where does one stop.