Clayton Cramer's BLOG

What Happens When You Don't Plan Things?

2008-05-07T21:11:00.004-06:00

What Happens When You Don't Plan Things?

You get disasters like this, where a First World country can't even arrange its health care system adequately to handle its own births. Fortunately, they live next to a country where the government doesn't run things. From the May 5, 2008 Toronto Globe & Mail:

More than 100 Canadian women with high-risk pregnancies have been sent to United States hospitals over the past year � in what a doctors' group attributes to the lack of a national birthing plan.

The problem has peaked, with British Columbia and Ontario each sending a record number of women to U.S. neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). Specifically, 80 B.C. women have been sent to U.S. hospitals since April 1, 2007; in Ontario, 28 have been sent since January of 2007, according to figures from the respective health ministries.

Andr� Lalonde, executive vice-president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, said the problem is due to bed closings that took place almost a decade ago, the absence of a national birthing initiative and too few staff.

�Neonatologists are very stretched right now,� Dr. Lalonde said in a telephone interview from Ottawa. �We're so stretched, it's kind of dangerous.�

A national birthing initiative, he said, is urgently required to ensure services are planned, guidelines on the best way to care for these patients are implemented, and a stronger focus is placed on maternity patient safety.

Canada, once able to boast about its high rank in the world for low infant-mortality rate � sixth place in 1990 � saw its rank plummet to 25th place in 2005, according to figures published this year by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Specifically, Canada's infant mortality rate of 5.4 deaths per 1,000 live births is tied with Estonia's and more than double Sweden's rate of 2.4.

The inability for Canada to care for all of its sick and premature babies has caught the attention of renowned pediatrics professor Shoo Lee, who is studying the health outcomes of infants sent abroad, in addition to those who remain here, often under stretched staffing conditions.

�If you have insufficient resources in the province, what does that mean for those kept in the system?� Dr. Lee, director of the Canadian Neonatal Network, said from Edmonton. �Are they being admitted to the NICU only when they are very sick? Are they being pushed out too early to make room for others?�

Philippe Chessex, division head of neonatology for B.C. Women's Hospital & Health Centre, said every effort is made to avoid out-of-province transfers. Even sick babies who aren't sent to the U.S. can still face several moves while at home.

�We're transferring babies across the province, in all directions, to try to find an extra bed for the next potential birth or for any baby already born,� Dr. Chessex said in a telephone interview from Vancouver. �We now have babies who have been transferred up to six times after leaving here before reaching home.�

Will someone please page Michael Moore?

Part of what makes this happen isn't just that Canada has socialized health care. It is that, unlike a number of other countries with socialized health care, it prohibits doctors treating anyone outside of that system. Some of the problem is also that when you adopt socialized health care as a way of controlling costs--one way to control costs to reduce the amount of health care provided.

That might be a legitimate collective, social decision--but prohibiting health care outside of the socialized system is what takes you from a bad collective decision to something that smacks of totalitarianism--the grave fear that someone, somewhere, might be able to buy better health care because they have more money.

Gun Control Movement & Political Fundraising

2008-05-07T12:47:00.003-06:00

Gun Control Movement & Political Fundraising

Snowflakes in Hell has an interesting comparison of fundraising by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence's Political Action Committee and the NRA's Political Victory Fund. NRA-PVF has raised about $8.4 million, and spent about $3.7 million. The Brady Campaign's PAC has raised $73 and spent $3,161. Yes, you read that right: $73. Not $73,000. Not $73 million--but $73.

Okay, it's not exactly a fair comparison. The gun control movement gets an enormous amount of free promotion from the mainstream news media--although somewhat less than they used to get. The Democratic Party, in spite of both Obama and Clinton trying to distance themselves from gun control, is an almost wholly owned subsidiary of the gun control movement. This means that the gun control movement doesn't need to spend even close to as much money as our side does to elect its friends to office. But there does come a certain moment when the disparity becomes so large that it makes the gun control movement irrelevant.

Perhaps the more interesting point that Snowflakes in Hell makes is what this astonishingly weak fundraising tells us about the level of support that the gun control movement has in America. Traditionally, gun control financial support has come from a small number of billionaires (and not all on the left--think of Reagan's crony Justin Dart). Our support comes from rather more ordinary people:

More importantly, if you go to opensecrets.org yourself, and look at NRA-PVF�s top donors, you�ll see professions like �Machine Operator�, �Police Officer�, �Computer Technician�, �Engineer�, �Mechanic�, �Truck Driver�, �Art Teacher�. Sure, you also have your attorneys, doctors, and businessmen, but think about how much $1000 dollars means to a truck driver? Or an Art Teacher? Meanwhile the Brady�s have raised not just a little money, but nothing. Think about that, and what it says about where the passion is on this issue.

At least, that's what I hope it means. My primary election is coming up in a bit less than three weeks, and I know that NRA members will be looking at my grade and my opponent's grade--and I suspect that very few are going to vote for him.

"Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign"

2008-05-07T11:26:00.005-06:00

"Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign"

If you are old enough, this chorus will bring back memories. Anyway, my campaign signs arrived today, and we are busily distributing them and putting them up. A couple of interesting lessons learned:

1. These are 14" x 22" signs--which is a common size in urban and suburban settings for front yards. But out here in rural Idaho, along high speed roads, these are a little small. In retrospect, I should have ordered 100 of the larger size, instead of 250 of this size.

2. The metal stands that these signs come with work fine in relatively soft soil (such as a lawn). They require a bit of hammering to put into a lot of the hard soils that we have in Boise County.

I really find the notion of campaign signs obnoxious. They convey no real information--nor can they, considering that they are intended to be read by passing drivers. They exist for one purpose only--to create name recognition, and the illusion of widespread support for the candidate--and they aren't cheap. For the same money, I could have done a mailing to about 500 households that gave a thoughtful discussion of public policy. But the name recognition is very important--more important than intellectually engaging the voters.

In some ideal democracy, voters who knew nothing about the candidates would either learn enough to make rational decisions, or not vote for either candidate. But the real world isn't like that. Many people vote based on, "I've seen that name around" or decide to not vote for someone because, "They don't stand a chance."

Anyway, if you live in my district, contact me about a sign. We've got plenty, and the more of them we have up, the more likely we are to win.

UPDATE: Here's the sign:

Home Feeders (Part 2)

2008-05-06T08:26:00.002-06:00

Home Feeders (Part 2)

I mentioned a couple of days ago how differently our society might regard people who dine at home if we had taken the same path about food that we took about public schools a century ago. A reader points out that the kibbutz movement in Israel did try to eliminate "home feeding" with everyone eating communally. More importantly, he points to this article in the Autumn 2002 City Journal about malnourished criminals in Britain--adults who grew up in such abusive homes that their mothers (what are fathers?) simply never fed them, and who seemed incapable of recognizing and preparing a healthy meal. Of course, we have such situations here too, and I mentioned that there are parents this neglectful.

I rather doubt that these British criminals are that way because of the lack of a public restaurant system, however. It is more that the completely dysfunctional family structure that means that these kids were living on potato chips and chocolate also failed to teach them healthy approaches to life.

Government Size & Efficiency

2008-05-05T21:47:00.002-06:00

Government Size & Efficiency

A reader shared this example with me of an interesting problem with consolidating small governmental agencies and made some very useful suggestions:

You mention that many small school districts in Idaho have lots of administration, and wonder if perhaps they should consolidate. Such consolidations can, in the short run, create interesting political problems if the populations of the districts are unequal, especially if rural districts are consolidated with an "urban" district.

For example, my wife grew up just outside State Center, Iowa, population 1349 at the 2000 census. Sometime when she was a kid, they consolidated all the west Marshall County schools into one district. State Center was by far the largest community in the consolidated district. Fortunately, the area is pretty homogenous, and the schools weren't really politicized, but they renamed State Center Elementary to West Marshall Elementary, and named the new middle and high schools to "West Marshall" as a gesture to people from outlying areas who were concerned about State Center "taking over" their schools. (This is the sort of trivial issue that people will get really worked up over if everything is running ok otherwise, and even sometimes when things are really broken.)

One thing I'd suggest is looking at what demands the state (and the counties) make of school districts, and what minimum level of staffing that requires, and see if it's reasonable to reduce some of those demands instead of pushing districts to consolidate. (I'd expect in Idaho that some of those consolidated districts will be rather large geographically, which carries its own costs - how effective will a superintendent be if he has to spend 4 hours on the road to visit some of his schools?) Some of the small school districts may be inefficiently small, but sometimes inefficiency is a cost worth paying for keeping people involved and feeling like they have some control. Reducing the inefficiency while retaining the same level of local control is a better outcome than consolidation, especially if consolidation is "forced" by the state.

One problem with trying to improve efficiency of small districts without consolidation is that in some cases, there might not be enough work to keep someone working full-time at a particular position for a single district--and yet, if you make the job part-time, suddenly, you discover that many potential employees can't afford to take a job without benefits. This is one of those cases where it may make sense to consolidate several governmental agencies--or perhaps arrange for a single employee to be shared by several agencies, full-time with one agency, but with the other agencies sharing the expenses.

There's Gotta Be A Way To Do This

2008-05-05T21:41:00.002-06:00

There's Gotta Be A Way To Do This

It turns out that the 5.5" ID aluminum tube is just a little too small to accept the CI-700 equatorial mount head. How much too small? Close enough that the calipers claim that it will fit (although the accuracy of these calipers declines as they approach the end of their 6" range)--so this is hundredths of an inch too small, and partly because the tube isn't perfectly round.

This is too big to put on the lathe, so I can only hold it under the drill press with an end mill in it, and slowly turn the tube. I've done something like this before, but it sure is inelegant.

These are the times that I wish that I had a low accuracy lathe--something that if it turned parts to an accuracy of .05", that would be just fine.

Louisiana Voters: Time To Light Up The Phones

2008-05-05T14:33:00.001-06:00

Louisiana Voters: Time To Light Up The Phones

Xavier Thoughts tells us that a concealed carry on campus bill escaped the lower house Criminal Justice Committee.

Kettle Calling Pot Black

2008-05-05T14:24:00.003-06:00

Kettle Calling Pot Black

Ben Smith at The Politico has a scan of the mailer that Clinton is using against Obama--pointing out that he is a liar about gun control--telling different groups radically different things about his position.

Now, Clinton is correct about this, as I have pointed out before. But this really says something about Clinton's desperation--that she is reminding voters that Obama is a gun banner. What next? Will she send out a mailer accusing Obama of supporting increased taxes?

I suppose if Clinton's point is that Obama isn't honest about this, and she is at least an honest supporter of restrictive gun control, that might be a valid way to spin this. But the target audience for this mailer are those of us who "cling" to our guns and religion because we are so desperately poor. This isn't a mailer going out to the obscenely rich Democrats on the coasts.

Switzerland Loses It

2008-05-04T22:10:00.004-06:00

Switzerland Loses It

At first glance, it reads like a really, really deadpan parody of animal rights. But it seems to be deadly serious. From the Swiss government's Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH), The dignity of living beings with regard to plants: Moral consideration of plants for their own sake:

The Federal Constitution has three forms of protection for plants: the protection of biodiversity, species protection, and the duty to take the dignity of living beings into consideration when handling plants.

Huh? The dignity of animals? No, they mean the dignity of plants.

It became clear, however, that for plants � unlike animals � it was almost impossible to refer to moral intuition. There is no social consensus on how to deal with plants. Even within the ECNH, the intuitions relating to the extent and justification of moral responsibilities towards plants were highly heterogeneous. Some members were of the opinion that plants are not part of the moral community, because they do not satisfy the conditions for belonging to this community. Others argued that plants should not belong to it, because otherwise human life would be morally over-regulated. A further group felt that there were particular situations in which people should refrain from something for the sake of a plant, unless there are sufficient grounds to the contrary. This opinion was justified either by arguing that plants strive after something, which should not be blocked without good reason, or that recent findings in natural science, such as the many commonalities between plants, animals and humans at molecular and cellular level, remove the reasons for excluding plants in principle from the moral community. The only criterion on which all the members could agree, despite their very differing intuitions, was that we should not harm or destroy plants arbitrarily.

G. K. Chesterton is often credited (perhaps incorrectly) with the saying, "When men stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing. They believe in anything." The proof is visible above. What next? Should we be concerned about mistreatment of rocks? Rocks might "strive after something" also.

I found this astonishing indication of where Europe is heading over at Volokh Conspiracy, where the winning comment has to be:

Can �Mineral Rights� be far behind? I don�t know about moral equivalence, but this panel has clearly demonstrated that they are intellectually inferior to a box of rocks.

UPDATE: Oh yeah: here's the music video by the Arrogant Worms: "Carrot Juice is Murder."

Flying Buttresses, Solid Buttresses, & Tripods

2008-05-04T20:08:00.003-06:00

Flying Buttresses, Solid Buttresses, & Tripods

Okay, the square tube is plenty stiff; the 1/4" thick L-brackets that link the square tubes to the vertical tube that holds the tripod isn't.

It occurs to me that nearly all tripods use some variant of a triangle. Either they have the legs going out at a angle, or they use a triangular bracket to tie each leg to the vertical tube. The reason is that the diagonal distributes the load.

I am thinking that perhaps what might be the right way to do this would be to either add a diagonal from the top of the tube (which is 10.5" tall) to the end of the leg, so that most of the load would be distributed directly to where the casters are located, or replace the L-bracket with a right triangle 3/4" thick, and perhaps 10" high.

The right triangle is much easier to make, although the material cost if made of aluminum is substantial. I could drill out lightening holes to get the weight down.

Adding a diagonal member might not be so difficult. I could use some square tube (I still have plenty), cut it at the correct angles to make the L-brackets be the right angle. Somewhere there must be something that shows how the load works for cathedrals, flying buttresses, and solid buttresses.

The good news is that it won't be written in Latin; medieval cathedral builders did everything like this by experiment. The cathedrals that stayed up inspire wonder in us today; a number didn't stay up. You could say that they buried their mistakes.

UPDATE: I went back out to the garage, took another look at everything, and had a sudden inspiration. Dobsonian telescopes (as Big Bertha 1.0 was) consist of:

1. A flat base.

2. A cradle that rotates in azimuth on the flat base.

3. The telescope tube that rotates in altitude on bearings on the cradle.

I thought about it for a couple of minutes, and realized that I had already put the casters onto the flat base--which is two inches thick of solid oak. Hmmm. I think that would hold the 5.5" ID tube into which the CI-700 mount should go. All I had to do was:

1. Remove the casters that I had removed from the flat base, and put them back in the flat base.

2. Remove the square aluminum tubes from the L-brackets.

3. Drill and tap (yes, you can tap oak) the flat base to match the holes in the L-brackets that were attached to the square aluminum tubes.

4. Screw 3" long 3/8"-16 bolts through the L-brackets into the flat base.

5. Put nuts on the bottom of the flat base to hold the bolts--in case, for any reason, the threads in the oak give way.

It is an elegant reuse of materials! It might look better to use a 1/4" thick stainless steel square instead, and it would certainly be resistant to the weather, but I already have the oak, and I know that it will handle the load--it has been handling the far greater load of Big Bertha 1.0.

Tomorrow: I need to drill and tap 3/8"-16 holes at the top of the 5.5" ID tube for the bolts that hold the CI-700 equatorial mount head into the tube. At that point, it's just a matter of moving the mount, bolting everything together, and then moving Big Bertha 2.0 into the saddle.

Home Feeders

2008-05-04T19:23:00.002-06:00

Home Feeders

A while back, I wrote an amusing piece (well, I thought it was amusing) analogizing education to food--and imagining a society where public restaurants fed every resident, free of charge (as well as illegal aliens, of course, but not tourists just passing through). In the course of that piece, I made a reference to home schoolers that I thought would be immediately recognized as sarcasm--but at least one home schooler thought that I was seriously calling them whackos, by comparing them to people who insisted on having meals at home with their family, instead of going to the tax-funded public restaurant system.

Anyway, I was thinking more about home schoolers today, and I found myself wondering: what if, in 1870, elites of Western societies had made a concerted effort to create a tax-funded public restaurant system? How would we regard people that ate at home today?

If this seems like an absurd idea, I've read that part of why Britain started its family nutrition supplement program after the Boer War (1899-1902) was because so many young men that volunteered for military service were so badly nourished that they simply could not pass the physical. (This page seems to be acknowledging as much.) Imagine if the dominant idea of Edwardian England had been socialism, not welfare state capitalism? Today we would have a public restaurant system like I described previously.

I admit that this is a radical concept. Even the Soviet Union, to my knowledge, didn't try to abolish the concept of families preparing and eating meals together. Some socialists did float the idea--but even Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward only imagined a future where dinner was eaten in the community dining hall. Still, how would we today look at "home feeders"--those who insisted on preparing meals at home for themselves and their children?

Defenders of the public restaurant system would admit that some parents had sufficient knowledge of nutrition and food preparation to prepare adequate meals for their children. But how, without a degree in nutrition, could most parents expect to prepare properly balanced meals? Why, just look at how bad the situation was a century ago! People sickened and died of pellagra, beri-beri, and a host of other malnutrition diseases! Even today you hear of parents who let their kids go hungry, or inadequately nourished! Just think what it would be like if parents had the option of keeping their tax dollars, and were given the enormous responsibility of buying food at the store!

And without the professional training and state certification in food preparation, how could the average parent expect to consistently prepare meals without giving their children food poisoning? Look at how often people get food poisoning even in licensed restaurants that are subject to health inspections! It is just asking for trouble for most parents to try this themselves. It might work for a few weeks, but you just know that a parent is going to fail to wash his hands in between cutting up the chicken and putting the plates on the table!

A few defenders of the public restaurant system would insist that "home feeders" were just kooks who wanted to teach their children "fringe ideas" about eating which shouldn't even be allowed until the children were 21--or that "home feeders" are going to give their kids nothing but soft drinks and Twinkies for every meal--because that's what the kids want, and parents are too lazy to say no.

Because the tax structure forces you to pay for the public restaurant system, almost everyone will use it. Since most people won't know any "home feeders," all sorts of outrageous lies will be told about them, and many people won't know any better.

Why It Has Been Silent Here

2008-05-04T10:06:00.003-06:00

Why It Has Been Silent Here

I've been busy talking to people, getting the first direct mail piece printed, and identifying who gets that first mailing, etc. The Idaho World had a nice article about my campaign which is generating some positive responses from voters.

And I've been getting the shorter tripod built so that I can put the Celestron CI-700 and Big Bertha 2.0 on it. I still have some misgivings about whether the square tube that I will be using for the legs will be stiff enough to support the weight--I'm try this first with something heavy and cheap, just in case the tripod either bends or fails.

I also spent yesterday struggling to mill the part required to fill an order for a caster assembly for the Vixen HAL tripod. I finally gave up, and refunded the customer's money. I just couldn't get the mill vise to hold the chunk of Delrin in place well enough. Why?

I've had this problem intermittently before, and I am now convinced that the screw that clamps the vise in position is the problem. It is a socket (Allen) head 10-32 screw--and over time, the wrench damages the socket from a hexagon into something closer to a circle--and so I can't get enough torque.

I could just keep replacing the screw. They are cheap. But the problem is that there isn't a bright line that separates "adequately tight" and "not adequately tight." The damage to the head takes place very slowly, and so it isn't obvious when it is time to replace it. I think I will replace it with a hex head 10-32 screw instead--something that I can use a wrench to tighten that won't chew up the interior surfaces.

Goldilocks and Governmental Size

2008-05-01T07:51:00.003-06:00

Goldilocks and Governmental Size

One of the concerns that I had when I entered this contest is that some of the smaller school districts in Idaho seem to be top heavy with administration for the number of students that they have. There is clearly a point where it is more efficient to merge several small school districts into one, with a single superintendent, and a common staff for administration and purchasing, instead of having four or five districts each doing its job independently. I was focused on efficiency--but that's not the only problem with small governmental agencies.

I spent a bit of time listening to a tale of governmental corruption from one of the voters in my district--and I was able to confirm with others that this isn't paranoia. I won't go into all the details, except to say that it is a small governmental entity where a very small number of closely related voters are able to use their power to enrich the patriarch of the clan at the expense of the taxpayers of Idaho.

There was a time when I would have scratched my head about this, but there is plenty of precedent. The city of Cotati in California into the 1980s had a very curious situation that was somewhat similar. At the time that this situation developed, there were only about 2000 people living there [correction: 3475 at the 1980 census], and one extended family with many dozens of members exercised so much political power that the criminal justice system was corrupted.

I first became aware of this because my mother-in-law worked as a telemarketer at a company in Cotati. One night, some drunken yahoos were throwing rocks at the windows, and they called the police. The police came out, calmed the drunken yahoos down, and explained that members of this extended family were privileged from arrest for misdemeanors because of the political power that the family exercised. I have since read about this remarkable situation in mainstream publications. In the 1980s, the population of Cotati grew substantially, and the political power of this family collapsed because of that population growth. By the time we moved out of the area in 2001, the family privilege from arrest for misdemeanors no longer existed.

It is apparent if you live in a large city that corruption is a fundamental part of how things work. You may recall in the 1980s 60 Minutes did a hidden camera thing in Chicago where they caught large numbers of restaurant inspectors openly demanding bribes to pass restaurants--it was just a fringe benefit of the job.

A friend of mine built a house in the Los Angeles some years ago--and was having a heck of a time getting final approvals from the building inspectors. There wasn't anything actually wrong with the house, and it was apparent that the reasons for rejection were excuses. He finally figured out that there was someone that needed a bribe--but because he wasn't part of the building community there, he didn't know whose palm needed greasing--and it isn't like he could call up the Building Department and ask who was in charge of accepting bribes.

We all know that bigness can mean corruption--but pretty clearly, smallness can also mean corruption. If the number of voters in a political entity gets small enough, and especially if there is a mechanism by which that entity can suck money out of other governmental bodies, the temptation to do so seems to be irresistible.

I suspect that someone, somewhere, has a done a doctoral dissertation with a ponderous title like Optimal Polity Size For Efficiency and Public Sector Integrity that has determined how small an entity can get before inefficiency and corruption take over, and similarly, how large an entity can get before corruption takes over on the other end of the scale.

"Climate Change" Not "Global Warming"

2008-04-30T08:58:00.002-06:00

"Climate Change" Not "Global Warming"

It is the last day of April--and it is snowing outside.

The nice thing about how the global warming crowd has changed their cliche from "global warming" to "climate change" is that everything fits "climate change." Unusually hot weather? Climate change! Unusually cold weather? Climate change! High winds? Climate change! No wind at all? Climate change!

You would think that there would be some slight embarrassment about this, but when the goal is to make corporations and bureaucracies filthy rich, there is nothing that embarrasses.

Property Taxes & Government Services

2008-04-29T22:12:00.003-06:00

Property Taxes & Government Services

I've spent quite a bit of time talking to people around my district today, by phone--ecofriendly campaigning! I keep hearing one recurring complaint about what happens to property taxes when someone moves in with lots of money and builds a nice house.

One of the complaints this evening was that a person moved into this rural community and built a million dollar house. For those of you on the coasts--we have a lot of million dollar views in Idaho, but few million dollar houses. Other houses in the area were then reassessed because of the increase in value--and people living in ancient, not good shape farmhouses now have their property taxes rise dramatically.

One of the points that I made when answering a questionnaire for a PAC several weeks back was that property taxes, which pay for government services, should be be determined based on the cost of services--not the value of the house. A 1200 square foot costs the same amount for the fire department to protect if it is worth $100,000 or $400,000. The insurance company has a good reason to charge you a higher premium for the more expensive house, but the fire department doesn't. They need the same equipment, the same number of firefighters, the same amount of water.

It is true that as property values rise, government employee salaries might have to rise as well, and so there has historically been a weak connection between the cost of providing government services and the value of homes--but this is only a weak connection. It would make a lot more sense for property taxes that are paying for government services that are associated with a piece of property to be set based on the likely cost of those services.

Fire services for a bare patch of land would be pretty minimal compared to a house. Without question, even an unimproved land require some fire protection services because of wildfire, but there are no structures to save, and usually, no lives. I suspect that there would be few differences between a one story 1200 square foot house and a one story 3000 square foot house. At most, the differences would be in the number of likely occupants; it might make sense to charge a bit more for five bedrooms vs. three bedrooms.

As the number of stories increase, or distance from a public road or water supply to the dwelling increases, there would be legitimate reasons to increase the fire services charge. It should be obvious that a five story building has much higher service costs than an equivalent low-rise shopping mall (you need those hook and ladder rigs). Some businesses might well justify a higher service cost because of hazardous materials.

Police services are a similar situation. It might well be that a nice house in Eagle has more stuff to steal than a crummy house in a rundown section of Boise. But again, pricing should have some connection to actual demand for services. I would expect that a lot of bars would end up with substantially higher service charges than family restaurants, simply because alcohol does breed fights. Some neighborhoods with big burglary problems would end up paying much higher police service costs for that very reason.

Now, at this point, some of you are going to start screaming "discrimination!" because the poorest neighborhoods in many places have the highest rates of burglary, murder, robbery, rape, etc. This might well be the case (although crimes like motor vehicle theft and burglary are often much more common in nicer neighborhoods), but think very carefully about this, and you will start to see one great advantage to realistic pricing: it provides information from which you can make rational economic decisions.

If property taxes in your neighborhood go up because of an increase in burglaries, you have a very direct incentive to correct this localized problem by being more actively involved in your community and improving the security of your home. If increased neighborhood vigilance, more alarm systems, and more care in locking the house when you leave reduces burglaries--you will see some decline in police service fees within a year or two. There is a strong, fairly direct incentive to take steps that make you and the rest of your neighborhood more secure. The same would be true with respect to fire hazards, especially in rural areas where some people let the weeds build up until the nearest fire department issues an abatement order.

I remember reading some years ago, right after California passed Proposition 13, that the city of Inglewood started to look at doing something like this to get around the freeze in residential property taxes. They went so far as to start evaluating individual commercial buildings for how much work they would be for the fire department. In some cases, particular buildings that were considered especially dangerous would have experienced increases. In some cases, such as the Forum (a sports and concert forum), the net effect would have been a reduction in property taxes--because the Forum was apparently especially well designed with respect to fire exits, and automatic fire suppression.

This is another area where the current system isn't terribly rational. If I build a house with automatic fire sprinklers in it, built largely of non-combustible materials (lots of steel and glass, for example, with tile roofing), it substantially reduces the risk of fire destroying the house. My insurance company may give me a discount on the fire insurance. But I'll pay the same property taxes as my neighborhood who builds a house that meets the minimum building codes--but is otherwise a firetrap.

I will admit that I cringe a little at the thought of cities and counties evaluating each and every building for fire and police services. One problem is that it would be a very time consuming process, at least the first time, and it would involve a good bit of rather invasive evaluation. Some people wouldn't be willing to allow that kind of interior inspection--and I can't say that I blame them. Another problem is that there would be inevitably some subjective evaluations on some of these questions--and anything subjective means that there would be lawsuits--and sometimes with good reason.

It might be best to leave this at the level of objectively, externally measurable aspects of buildings and neighborhoods. How many stories is the building? What is the construction method on the building plans? How far from the nearest water supply? How far from the nearest public road? What are the external materials: combustible or not? Do the building plans show a built-in fire suppression sprinkler system? How many fire service calls were there in this square mile area in the last year? How many police service calls?

You could spend a lot of time arguing about the details, of course, and I'm sure that there are some details that I have completely missed. But it would solve a number of problems with the current system--and encourage property owners to make more rational economic decisions about government services.

Talking to Elmore County Republican Party Activists

2008-04-29T09:02:00.003-06:00

Talking to Elmore County Republican Party Activists

I have been strongly encouraged to believe that I have a decent shot at winning the Republican primary--which almost guarantees a victory in this district in the general election. I spent last night calling Republican activists in Elmore County--and I discovered that indeed, there might be a real shot at this, so I am trying to talk some of the national gun rights groups to open their wallets enough to pay for the direct mailings required to make this happen.

Beating the Bushes

2008-04-28T19:22:00.003-06:00

Beating the Bushes

I mentioned my concern a few days ago about CNN's coverage of America's health care crisis that neglected to mention malpractice insurance as part of the problem. Today, I received one of those pieces of spam that is part of why I just abhor personal injury attorneys:

Hi To All.

Many of you know my story.

In the Fall of 2004 I came across a large ad in my local newspaper soliciting Vioxx users who may have suffered negative side effects.

My direct marketing experience told me this seemed like a very expensive,around about way to find potential clients.

That's when I came up with my "Big Idea" (see White Paper at www.ServicesToLawyers.com).

Well, to those of you who shared my concept and participated in our marketing program - Congratulations!

We were able to generate thousands of prospective victims and that translated into hundreds of cases that will now be part of the Vioxx settlement and will be heading to the closing table.

I knew it! I knew if we took a page from of 12 years of successful B2B direct marketing, lead generation if you will, we could apply those rules to the legal industry and be successful.

From what we learned from our Vioxx experience we were able to provide successful cases involving Zyprexa, Fosamax and we continue to work on other suspect drugs. SS and Disability cases are also now part of our program.

Our new mass emailing program is effectively beating the bushes for victims needing representation and we are able to spread a wide net in our search yet also pinpoint just the particular area our lawyers are interested in.

So, while we are not permitted to share in the "success" fee, we do share in the knowledge of doing a job well done.

Please visit us for more details on how we can be of service.

P.S. Be sure to get information on our powerful new Motorcycle Accident Aquisition program and ask us about our success in finding and delivering 7 figure Trasylol cases and Medtronics re-call victims.
Check out our new,almost ready website... http://www.solvexx.co.uk/test_sites/stl/website/home.html

Best regards,
Jesse Levine
CEO
Services To Lawyers
(610) 825-2629
email: jesse@servicestolawyers.com
On the web: www.ServicesToLawyers.com

There's no question that there are drugs and medical devices that justify filing suits. Attorneys serve a legitimate--even necessary--role in keeping doctors, pharmaceutical, and medical equipment manufacturers honest, accurate, and looking out for something other than the bottom line. But when I get solicitations like this, or see the sleazy "have you been injured?" ads on cable television, I start to get pretty upset.

Why? There are legitimately injured parties out there. They deserve representation.

There's nothing really wrong with contingency pay for lawyers in cases like these. This provides a way for someone who doesn't have the money to hire a lawyer by the hour to get zealous representation. The real problem is that because we don't have a "loser pays" system, a lot of suits get filed where the attorney doesn't really believes that there is a valid reason for the suit--it's just a form of lottery where if you attach yourself to the right case, you can make obscene amounts of money. In the tobacco lawsuit settlements, some Republicans in Congress proposed limiting the lawyers fees to $3000 per hour--and the Democrats, friends of the little guys, thought that this was unfair to the lawyers.

There is a line, one that probably can't be written into law, where this ambulance chasing really does cross the line into something obscene. Emails like this certainly rub me the wrong way.

Great. Now I have that out of my system....

The Darwin/Nazi Connection

2008-04-27T20:32:00.003-06:00

The Darwin/Nazi Connection

Jack Cashill discusses the connection between Darwin and Nazi racial ideology here:

Darwin critics know Ernst Haeckel as the German philosopher whose faked embryo drawings helped generations of clueless students accept Darwinism--�Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny� and all that.

But there is still another problem with Haeckel, a darker one than mere fraud. Critics of the Ben Stein film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, apparently do not know this.

If they had, they would not have savaged Stein for daring to connect Adolph Hitler to Charles Darwin . In Scientific American, for instance, editor John Rennie describes this connection as �heavy-handed.� In Reuters, Frank Scheck calls it �truly offensive.�

It reality, it is neither. If anything, Stein and the makers of Expelled understate this historically irrefutable link, and the key to understanding it is Haeckel.

Born in Potsdam in 1834, Haeckel read Darwin�s On the Origin of Species in the summer it was first published in German, 1860, and fell immediately under its sway. He could see straight off that Darwin offered a useful exit strategy from a God-dominated cosmos.

Once liberated, Haeckel created his own secular religion called �Monism.� Not lacking for confidence, he imagined Monism as nothing less than a unified, naturalistic understanding of the entire universe.

�The modern science of evolution has shown that there never was any such creation,� claims Haeckel of the Judeo-Christian tradition, �but that the universe is eternal and the law of substance all-ruling.�

In his 1971 book, The Scientific Origins of National Socialism, Dr. Daniel Gasman of John Jay College shows the �decisive� role that Haeckel played in the development of the German �Volkish� movement, a revival of pre-Christian German culture and spiritualism that found its eventual ecological outlet in the Holocaust.

As it happens, many of the most influential Volkish spokesmen were tied in with either Haeckel or his Monist followers. These were the semi-respectable zanies that found common cause in National Socialism, and they were problem enough.

But it was in the field of eugenics and racial science that Haeckel had the most direct and lethal impact. Germany�s leading advocates of racial anthropology and eugenics, notes Gasman, �were deeply and consciously indebted to Haeckel for many, if not for most, of their ideas.�

Otto Ammon, (1842-1916), a Haeckel disciple, went public with what many Darwinists prefer to keep private, and that is the oddly spiritual nature of the Darwinian experience.

�In obvious imitation of Haeckel,� writes Gasman, �Ammon taught that Darwinism had to become Germany�s new religion. It had to be accepted as a complete Weltanschauung and its ideas had to be encouraged in every facet of life.�

Haeckel�s co-editor at the leading Darwinian joumal Kosmos, Ernst Krause, introduced still another unhinged idea, one that proved to have serious geo-political consequences.

It was Krause who transformed Germans into �Aryans.� In his two influential books, he labored to trace the origin of his imagined Aryan race back to classical Greece and to show the natural fitness of this race of people over time.

When the Nazis came to power, their narrow reading of just who was and who wasn�t an Aryan might have even seemed comic were it not so catastrophic.

I would recommend that you go and read it in full. It makes a nice companion piece to my discussion of American scientists writing about evolution, racism, and eugenics.

If evolutionary theory was misused for genocidal purposes, that doesn't make evolution false. But let's not pretend, as the National Center for Science Education does, that there was no substantial connection--and a perfectly logical connection at that. Ideologies that lead to forced sterilization, genocide, and suppression of alternative viewpoints in the sciences (such as the denial of "Jewish physics" by the Germans) should make their proponents at least a little embarrassed when the connections are pointed out.

Health Insurance: What Do You Really Know?

2008-04-26T21:36:00.003-06:00

Health Insurance: What Do You Really Know?

CNN was running a special this evening as part of their "Broken Government" series, and we were so unimpressed with it we turned it off. There seemed a lot of holes in their discussion that made me very skeptical that I was learning much.

One of the claims that they made, based on the Himmelstein et al. study here, is that more than half of U.S. bankruptcies are caused by medical expenses--and they gave a couple of horrifying examples of families with a really sick newborn that ran through the lifetime cap on their coverage. (You didn't know that there was a lifetime cap? Look carefully. It is usually one million dollars in total care.) My first reaction to this was, "I know that these things happen, but it is hard to believe that this is a common thing."

The Himmelstein study is worth reading. I notice several interesting points about it, some of which were either not mentioned by CNN, or which were given so little attention that I missed them:

1. This study is of "medical bankruptcy" which includes bankruptcies caused by illness that caused someone to be out of work--not necessarily just uncovered medical expenses:

Under the rubric �Major Medical Bankruptcy� we included debtors who either (1) cited illness or injury as a specific reason for bankruptcy, or (2) reported uncovered medical bills exceeding $1,000 in the past years, or (3) lost at least two weeks of work-related income because of illness/injury, or (4) mortgaged a home to pay medical bills.

2. Some of the "medical bankruptcies" are "medical" only in a sense that most Americans won't recognize:

Our more inclusive category, �Any Medical Bankruptcy,� included debtors who cited any of the above, or addiction, or uncontrolled gambling, or birth, or the death of a family member.

Well, yes, uncontrolled gambling or addiction can cause bankruptcy, and to the extent that an addiction is a medical problem, I guess you could call these "medical bankruptcies" but that's not what CNN wanted you to be thinking about, was it?

Still, let's not exaggerate how much contributes. The "Major Medical Bankruptcy" group was 46.2% of the bankruptcies; this goes up to 54.5% when you add the "Any Medical Bankruptcy" category as well.

3. The extent to which medical expenses caused or contributed to the bankruptcy is based on self-reporting by those going bankrupt. How accurately are the bankrupts recognizing the actual cause, and how honestly are they reporting it?

4. Some of those who went bankrupt may have had these $700,000 medical bills, such as one of the families that CNN showed. But to the extent that medical bills contributed to these bankruptcies, it isn't clear how much the medical bills contributed. The "Major Medical Bankruptcy" category included those with "uncovered medical bills exceeding $1,000 in the past years." Look, $1,000 is a lot of money, and certainly, there are people who had $20,000 or $100,000 in medical bills. Bankruptcy makes perfect sense for many people under those conditions. But if someone goes bankrupt on $2,000 in uncovered medical bills, for almost anyone who has better than a minimum wage job, this has to be the straw that broke the camel's back. This can't be a significant factor in causing bankruptcy.

I see from Exhibit 2 that 2% of bankruptcies had "mortgaged home to pay medical bills"--which is probably families that had really, really serious problems. They might well be the families with $700,000 medical bills that exceeded their health insurance, or they might be people who had no health insurance and something bad happened.

5. The report tells us in the summary (as CNN did) that many of those going bankrupt had medical insurance. But in the guts, it also tells us:

A lapse in health insurance coverage during the two years before filing was a strong predictor of a medical cause of bankruptcy (Exhibit 3). Nearly four-tenths (38.4 percent) of debtors who had a �major medical bankruptcy� had experienced a lapse, compared with 27.1 percent of debtors with no medical cause (p < .0001).

Exhibit 3 has one of those tables that is a bit confusing, but shows that 32% of bankrupts had no medical insurance when they filed, and 37.7% had a lapse in coverage in the preceding two years. This isn't surprising; if for any reason (loss of job, ran out of COBRA, couldn't afford to pay for health insurance, stupidly decided that you didn't need it) you were uninsured and ended up with a major medical expense, it would be unsurprising if you ended up going bankrupt.

6. How anyone could honestly read this study as proving that there was a major, widespread crisis of bankruptcy caused by medical bills alone, or even primarily, eludes me. As the paper points out:

Debtors� out-of-pocket medical costs were often below levels that are commonly labeled catastrophic. In the year prior to bankruptcy, out-of-pocket costs (excluding insurance premiums) averaged $3,686 (95 percent CI = $2,693, $4,679) (Exhibit 5). Presumably, such costs were often ruinous because of concomitant income loss or because the need for costly care persisted over several years. Out-of pocket costs since the onset of illness/injury averaged $11,854 (95 percent CI = $8,532, $15,175). Those with continuous insurance coverage paid $734 annually in premiums on
average, over and above the expenditures detailed above.

Now, $11,854 over several years, for some people, would be a great burden. For the very poor, it would make sense to go bankrupt on that amount of money. We can see from the confidence interval that there would have been a small number of these bankrupts with bills that ran into the $100,000 area and above. But if large numbers of people with good jobs are going bankrupt because of uncovered medical bills of $3,686 per year, there's got to be more to the story.

There is a real problem. But I am impressed how much this paper has been distorted as evidence that our health insurance problem is causing lots of people with good jobs to go into bankruptcy.

Expelled Exposed

2008-04-25T22:52:00.003-06:00

Expelled Exposed

The National Center for Science Education has a website up now called Expelled Exposed, claiming that Stein's movie doesn't do a very accurate job of discussing the subject. As I mentioned in my review, there was one case in which I had done a bit of reading, involving Professor Gonzalez's denial of tenure at Iowa State University. As I also mentioned, I felt that Stein might have done a more complete job by pointing out Gonzalez's failure to get tenure might have had something to do with his inability to get research grants to Iowa State. Nonetheless, the surprise that Stein sprung on the department chair about his email referring to "religious nutcases" was pretty devastating. (And which NCSE didn't seem to mention. I guess Stein isn't the only person leaving out rather significant details.)

I should also mention that the NCSE also claims that perhaps Gonzalez's failure to get tenure was because, as stellar of a scientist as had been in his 20s, after he received his Ph.D., the volume of his published work in scholarly journals dropped. This raises several interesting possibilities:

1. That Gonzalez went from being a remarkable scientist to suddenly not all that good for no apparent reason.

2. That Gonzalez's decline in getting work published and obtaining research grants might have been been because he had gone off the reservation to ask serious philosophical questions that didn't fit with the conventional wisdom.

Hmmm. I wonder which it could be?

When it comes to how the NCSE website deals with a subject on which I have some expertise--racism and early 20th century America--well, they are at least out of their depth, and in some areas, engaging in some dishonest sleight of hand. (Your tax dollars at work.)

Expelled Exposed claims:

Expelled�s inflammatory implication that Darwin and the science of evolution �led to� eugenics, Nazis, and Stalinism is deeply offensive and detrimental to public discussion and understanding of science, religion, and history.

...

Since the 1920�s, a narrow group of Christians who rejected the modernizing changes made by mainstream Protestants, have wrongly tried to blame evolution for the ills of modern society. World War I, atheism, and communism have all been attributed to evolution. After World War II, this narrow group added Nazism and Fascism to the horrors supposedly caused by evolution. Such claims occur in the writings of the young-earth creationist Henry M. Morris, a founder of the modern creation science movement, and have been repeated by �intelligent design� promoters and creationist Christian organizations such as Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, and Coral Ridge Ministries.

It is indeed deeply offensive (to the NCSE) but it wasn't a "narrow group of Christians" who drew the connection of evolution to eugenics. Read University of Chicago Zoology Professor Horatio Hackett Newman's Readings in Evolution, Genetics, and Eugenics (University of Chicago Press, 1921), starting at page 465 for a discussion of how governments have solved the problems of feeblemindedness by passing eugenics laws, and fear of how the inferior forms of humans were increasing in America.

Starting on p. 475:

4. The Restriction of Undesirable Germ Plasm

A negative way to bring about better blood in the world is to follow the clarion call of Davenport, and "dry up the streams that feed the torrent of defective and degenerate protoplasm." This may be partially accomplished, at least in America, by employing the following agencies: control of immigration; more discriminating marriage laws; a quickened eugenic sentiment; sexual segregation of defectives; and finally, drastic measures of asexualization or sterilization when necessary.

a) Control of Immigration

The enforcement of immigration laws tends to debar from the United States not only many undesirable individuals, but also incidentally to keep out much potentially bad germplasm that, if admitted, might play havoc with future generations.

Here's another book, by Southwestern College Biology Professor William M. Goldsmith, The Laws of Life: Principles of Evolution, Heredity and Eugenics (Boston: The Gorham Press, 1922). Again, all three of these are brought together, and starting on page 398 is a chapter whose title alone tells you where this is going: "Moulding the Super-Man." The topics to be covered are also pretty typical of where this stuff was headed:

Final "Evolution of Man"--A Broader View Necessary--Our Attitude--The Unfit Work an Injustice upon Society--Eugenic Responsiblity--Human Inheritance--The Jukes--The Edwards--the Kallikas--Relation of Degeneracy to the Community--Inequality of Men--Overproduction of Inferior--Limiting the Unfit--Sterilization...

I could keep going, but this is the sort of racist trash also appears repeatedly in Democratic newspapers of the period 1916-23 that I have read while researching other topics, such as the Sacramento Bee, and the San Francisco Chronicle. The Bee was quoting a prominent birth control advocate of the time about the dangers of the black race outreproducing the white race--and that was the reason why birth control had to be legal. The Chronicle article warned of the danger of "race suicide" if little (white) boys had to grow up in apartments instead of houses.

Now, the NCSE points out that after World War II, prominent evolutionist often argued against eugenics. Well, sure. The smoke rising from the ovens put something of a damper on the party. But when you compare Stein's careful observation that Darwinism wasn't the only component that created Naziism with the NCSE's false claim that this connection of evolution to eugenics and Naziism is "deeply offensive and detrimental to public discussion and understanding of science, religion, and history"--they are either in way over their heads, or lying.

If the NCSE is going to accuse Ben Stein of playing fast and loose with the truth, they better stop doing so themselves.

If HP Employees Were 10% of the Population...

2008-04-25T13:49:00.002-06:00

If HP Employees Were 10% of the Population...

This hare-brained proposal would guarantee a Democratic victory in November. From April 24, 2008 NBC channel 11 in San Jose:

There is a buzz in Republican political circles that John McCain could pick former Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman Carly Fiorina, 53, to be his vice presidential nominee.

NBC11 political analyst Larry Gerston said a potential McCain-Fiorina ticket could inspire Republicans who think the country may be on the "precipice of change."

Oh yeah! I could see this! If McCain didn't survive his first term, Fiorina would, based on the HP experience:

Outsource national security to China
Terrorize existing employees into grim, reluctant action
"Buy" Mexico (and somehow, when it was over, most of our police officers and judges would be Mexican)
If she did for the dollar what she did for HP stock, the balance of payments problem would be solved quickly, because we would have among the lowest labor rates in the world

I don't think much of McCain, but even he isn't stupid enough to pick Empress Fiorina.

And the bad news is: I don't dislike her anywhere near as much as many HP employees do.

I Woke Up In A Parallel Universe

2008-04-25T08:16:00.003-06:00

I Woke Up In A Parallel Universe

The BBC is running articles about how much more civilized much of America is than Britain--in spite of being the land of guns. From April 22, 2008:

On the anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting, all this will feel to some like a rather depressing, if predictable, American story. A story of an inability to get to grips with violence.

At the moment, there is an effort being made to overturn a ban on some types of weapon in Washington DC.
Among those dead against this plan - those who claim it would turn the nation's capital into the Wild West - is a lanky black man (he looks like a basketball player) called Anwan Glover.
Anwan peeled off articles of clothing for our cameras and revealed that he had been shot nine times.
One bullet is still lodged in an elbow.
His younger brother was shot and killed a few months ago.
Anwan was speaking to us in a back alley in north-east Washington. If you heard a gun shot in this neighbourhood you would not feel surprised.
'Gentler environment'
Why is it then that so many Americans - and foreigners who come here - feel that the place is so, well, safe?

"I have met incredulous British tourists who have been shocked to the core by the peacefulness of the place"

A British man I met in Colorado recently told me he used to live in Kent but he moved to the American state of New Jersey and will not go home because it is, as he put it, "a gentler environment for bringing the kids up."
This is New Jersey. Home of the Sopranos.
Brits arriving in New York, hoping to avoid being slaughtered on day one of their shopping mission to Manhattan are, by day two, beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about. By day three they have had had the scales lifted from their eyes.
I have met incredulous British tourists who have been shocked to the core by the peacefulness of the place, the lack of the violent undercurrent so ubiquitous in British cities, even British market towns.
"It seems so nice here," they quaver.
Well, it is!
Violent paradox
Ten or 20 years ago, it was a different story, but things have changed.
And this is Manhattan.
Wait till you get to London Texas, or Glasgow Montana, or Oxford Mississippi or Virgin Utah, for that matter, where every household is required by local ordinance to possess a gun.
Folks will have guns in all of these places and if you break into their homes they will probably kill you.
They will occasionally kill each other in anger or by mistake, but you never feel as unsafe as you can feel in south London.
It is a paradox. Along with the guns there is a tranquillity and civility about American life of which most British people can only dream.
Peace and serenity
What surprises the British tourists is that, in areas of the US that look and feel like suburban Britain, there is simply less crime and much less violent crime.
Doors are left unlocked, public telephones unbroken.
One reason - perhaps the overriding reason - is that there is no public drunkenness in polite America, simply none.
I have never seen a group of drunk young people in the entire six years I have lived here. I travel a lot and not always to the better parts of town.
It is an odd fact that a nation we associate - quite properly - with violence is also so serene, so unscarred by petty crime, so innocent of brawling.

This is a really important point. It wasn't so many years ago that British journalists were making fun of President Bush's daughters getting in trouble for underage drinking, acting like America's drinking laws were some sort of leftover from Puritanism, and we might start burning witches at any time. But the fact is that intoxication plays a major part in high violence rates. A lot of urban sophisticates make the most absurd excuses for public drunkenness--while railing about the evils of gun ownership.

David Hardy at Arms and the Law links to this April 24, 2008 Chicago Tribune op-ed piece by a member of the editorial board:

When a rash of gun murders takes place, it makes sense for the police to do one of two things: renew tactics that have been effective in the past at curbing homicides, or embrace ideas that have not been tried before. But those options don't appeal to Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis. What he proposes instead is a crackdown on assault weapons.

I'm tempted to say this is the moral equivalent of a placebo�a sugar pill that is irrelevant to the malady at hand. But that would be unfair. Placebos, after all, sometimes have a positive effect. Assault weapons bans, not so much.

If there are too many guns in Chicago, it's not because of any statutory oversight. The city has long outlawed the sale and possession of handguns. It also forbids assault weapons. If prohibition were the answer, no one would be asking the question.

...

As of March 31, there had been 87 homicides in the city. When I asked the Chicago Police Department how many of the murders are known to have involved assault rifles, the answer came back: One.

As it happens, we already have ample experience with laws against these guns. From 1994 to 2004, their manufacture and sale were banned under federal law.

Yet nationwide, the number of murders committed with rifles and shotguns began falling three years before the law was enacted.

Wait a moment! A whole herd of pigs just flew by my window!

I Went Head To Head With My Opponent Last Night

2008-04-25T07:52:00.003-06:00

I Went Head To Head With My Opponent Last Night

I cannot imagine him being foolish enough to debate me in any public forum. I showed up at the Elmore County Republican Central Committee meeting last night to introduce myself. So did Senator Corder. I picked three issues of concern:

S.1323 (the sexual orientation and gender identity bill that Corder sponsored)
Mental Health Services and penny-wise, pound-foolish regulations
Expansion of college classes into rural Idaho--without spending a pile of money

I was pleased to see one of those in attendance ask, "Are you the Clayton Cramer?" He meant the historian--and he told me later that he has read everything that I have ever written on the subject of gun control. Ah, fame (even of the minor variety that I enjoy) has its virtues!

Senator Corder emphasized how many generations his family has lived here. He talked about helping individuals do battle with the state bureaucracy using what he called his "magic telephone book" and his opening line for getting bureaucrats to listen, "This is Senator Tim Corder." This would be a fine speech to give to a bunch with no particular ideological interest in what government does--but Republican Party activists, not surprisingly, tend to care about issues--not just making the bureaucracy do its job.

What startled me most of all--and in California, would probably have required Jack Bauer to torture an elected official into admitting--was when Corder told us about how much better off we are because the state hires his trucking company for various contracts. What really startled me, however, was when he told us about his trucks leaving one Transportation Department district and going into another in furtherance of some state contract--and some sort of problem came up. So he used his "magic telephone book", and an hour later, his trucks were again moving.

Now, Corder emphasized that because of his willingness to use his official position in behalf of his private business interests, all of us as taxpayers saved a lot of money. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on this. But I would regard this entire interaction of private business interests, state contracts, and leaning on a bureaucrat--even if the bureaucrat was in the wrong--as a serious conflict of interest.

The audience asked a lot of useful questions that helped to clearly distinguish Senator Corder and myself. Concerning S.1381, the bill to allow concealed carry permit holders to carry on public university campuses, Senator Corder was very pleased that it didn't even get out of committee. I explained that:

1. It was an emotional reaction to the Virginia Tech tragedy, and wasn't the best solution--which is to solve the mental health problem.

2. As a short-term solution, I supported S.1381, because I have family who spend time on campus--and I want them safe. Allowing concealed carry permit holders to carry on campus makes them safer.

3. There is a very serious question as to whether the current ban on open carry on campus would survive a challenge, based on In re Brickey (Ida. 1902).

Another question that came up was concerning student organizations. Some state university campuses apparently will not recognize or provide any funding to student organizations that are religious in nature. Others treat them like non-religious student organizations. Corder thought it was just fine to allow the university administration to continue this discriminatory policy. I pointed out that being public universities, they have an obligation under the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment to treat religious and non-religious organizations the same.

I Believe This Today, That's For Sure

2008-04-23T18:13:00.002-06:00

I Believe This Today, That's For Sure

This article from the April 23, 2008 Australian seems quite plausible today, as it is raining and hailing here--and we are a month into spring:

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it.

Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases.

There is also another possibility, remote but much more serious. The Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and other evidence show that for the past several million years, severe glaciation has almost always afflicted our planet.

The bleak truth is that, under normal conditions, most of North America and Europe are buried under about 1.5km of ice. This bitterly frigid climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials, typically lasting less than 10,000 years.

This is part of why the global warming crowd now is talking about "climate change" because "global warming" is pretty clearly not the case. "Climate change" is a great theme. If it is warming, it is because of carbon dioxide--we have to stop it. If it is cooling, it is because of carbon dioxide--we have to stop it.

What it all comes down to is increasing taxation and control under the pretense of protecting the environment.

Campaigning As Educative Tool

2008-04-23T18:01:00.002-06:00

Campaigning As Educative Tool

You know, even if you don't get elected, campaigning for public office is a way to educate people about important issues. (Or so you tell yourself, when you start to confront the likelihood that you aren't going to win.) I spent some time last night talking to representatives of the Idaho Education Association (the teachers' union). I was surprised that when I opened the conversation with my support for vouchers, they didn't seem horribly angry. I also used the opportunity to point out that in most industries, if a simple employer dominates the market, it is generally not good for the wages of workers--and this alone is a reason why public school teachers should be supportive of more private schools.

I also spent a bit of time today talking to a reporter from the Idaho Statesman--I think quite a bit more time than she originally intended to spend. But I have such interesting stories to tell! And it was also a chance to discuss the destructive social consequences of deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. The reporter is young enough that she doesn't remember what big cities were like before we went down this path.

I will be at the Elmore County Republican Central Committee meeting Thursday night. I wish that Boise County had a functional Republican party organization.