Minor Thoughts from me to you

It's been a pretty big surprise to me that one of the few magazines out there still interested in shedding some real light on how things work today in Washington D.C. is RollingStone. I mean, yeah, they were cool enough to print stuff from P.J. O'Rourke, but those were basically humor columns. Yet take a look to the right of Taylor Lautner's drenched abs on the above cover, for instance, and you'll note a small yellow caption reading "Obama's Wall Street Sellout, by Matt Taibbi". It's an understated advertisement for the latest gold from the rag's very skilled and utterly furious staff writer on politics.

His latest (June issue) story is entitled "Wall Street War". I'm ordering you to read it for free here on RollingStone's website, because it's as well-researched and well-written an article as I can imagine on the issue of financial reform and how our so-called representatives have turned betraying their constituents into an outright art form. This is really the sort of hard-hitting, truth-to-power stuff all major journalists should at least try to write.

The only criticism I have of the piece is its lackluster concluding paragraph. What Taibbi wrote to summarize "Wall Street War" doesn't hold a candle to the flourished finish he wrote for "The Great American Bubble Machine", his stellar article on the history of Goldman-Sachs.

It's not always easy to accept the reality of what we now routinely allow these people to get away with; there's a kind of collective denial that kicks in when a country goes through what America has gone through lately, when a people lose as much prestige and status as we have in the past few years. You can't really register the fact that you're no longer a citizen of a thriving first-world democracy, that you're no longer above getting robbed in broad daylight, because like an amputee, you can still sort of feel things that are no longer there.

But this is it. This is the world we live in now. And in this world, some of us have to play by the rules, while others get a note from the principal excusing them from homework till the end of time, plus 10 billion free dollars in a paper bag to buy lunch. It's a gangster state, running on gangster economics, and even prices can't be trusted anymore; there are hidden taxes in every buck you pay. And maybe we can't stop it, but we should at least know where it's all going.

I won't lie to you: to read words like these in a major magazine with a high circulation among my generation does my soul a world of good. In retrospect, maybe I should have realized that any magazine for adults willing to make the Jonas Bros. their monthly feature has be fearless, and now I'm wondering what I've been missing. Crazy as it seems, I'm also looking forward to what _ RollingStone_'s got next.

FURTHER READING: Matt Taibbi's smashing discussion of health care reform and American government, "Sick and Wrong: How Washington is screwing up health care reform — and why it may take a revolt to fix it."

For decades now state and local governments have been content to turn taxation over to the Federal governmnet. It's a pretty sweet gig. The Feds raise taxes -- capital gains, income, tarrifs, gasoline, whatever -- and get all of the voter anger and contempt. Then the Feds turn around and give the money back to the state in the form of grants, road spending bills, earmarks, or other forms of largesse.

It's an arrangement that gives State and local lawmakers the thrill of spending without the pain of actually, themselves, being responsible for taxing that much out of their residents.

It's an arrangement that does have some downsides. The biggest is the complete lack of local control. Remember the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules. A local Madison neighborhood is finding that out the hard way.

The pedestrian walkway under University Avenue at Spring Harbor Drive may be old and spooky. But school and neighborhood officials say it's necessary to keep kids and residents safe when they cross that roadway, where drivers routinely exceed the posted 35 mph speed limit.

Now they're worried that plans for a $7 million reconstruction of 1.9 miles of the avenue -- from North Segoe Road in Madison to Allen Boulevard in Middleton -- next year don't include re-building the tunnel.

... Madison officials say it would cost $1 million just to build a new tunnel because federal laws would require it to be accessible for people with physical handicaps -- unlike the current walkway -- and so far the money isn't available.

City officials say they'd love to make the passage's users happy, and staff engineer Christy Bachmann said the city has applied several times for federal money to redo the tunnel, but the project always ranks low and loses out on the grants. Ald. Mark Clear, whose 19th District includes the underpass, said the city has to do something with the passage come next spring.

"Because the reconstruction project is federally funded, they require that the pedestrian underpass at University Avenue and Spring Harbor Drive be brought into ADA compliance or removed," Clear said, referring to the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

Glen Yoerger, an engineer for the city of Madison, said the reconstruction of the street, 80 percent of which will be paid for with federal funds with the remainder coming from local funds, will install curb and gutters and medians where needed along University Avenue, among other improvements.

Well, better luck next time kids. Your Aldermen, County Board members, state Assemblymen, state Senators, and Governor long ago gave up the right to actually govern this state. As a result, they're powerless to help you now.

Speaking personally, I'd love to see a State legislature and a State governor stand up to the Feds and fight to keep tax dollars. Then, take responsibility for collecting the money for local needs and spending the money in a way that will best serve local needs. The Feds are never going to be as good at knowing what your State needs as you. Quit dodging responsibility and start doing your jobs.

Holy cow. The Wisconsin Democrat is calling it quits:

In a major blow to Democrats, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey has told close associates that he will not seek re-election and an announcement of his plans is expected as early as Wednesday.

The Wisconsin Democrat faces tough poll numbers at home but until Tuesday night his staff had insisted he was running aggressively and had hired campaign staff. But a person close to him confirmed the decision to POLITICO Wednesday and said Obey was preparing to make a statement.

via Obey Won't Seek Re-election - Daniel Foster - The Corner on National Review Online.

Seeing as how I think the House Appropriations Committee is full of the most arrogant, big spending collection of corruptocrats in the entire Congress and seeing as how Congressman Obey was their Chairman -- you might say that I'm elated at this news.

The minimum wage isn't bad because it hurts employers. It's bad because it hurts those who want to be their employees. Imagine you're either a recent college graduate or soon to be a college graduate. You're armed with a degree in English, History, Business, Electrical Engineering, or, well, it almost doesn't matter. You're armed with a degree. But so are hundreds of thousands of other recent graduates from across the country.

You can submit a resume to every employer who's looking for help. In fact, you have. But, then again, so have hundreds of other people. Some companies receive hundreds or even thousands of resumes for just one open position. How in the world are you ever supposed to rise to the top of the pile?

You think, despairingly: "If only they knew what a great worker I was. Once they see the work I can do, I know they'll hire me." Then you get a bright idea. You'll volunteer to work for free for a week or a month. You'll let them see the work you can do. Hopefully they will decide to hire you afterwards. And, if they don't, at least you'll have done something better than just sit around waiting.

Not so fast. Your bright idea is illegal. After all, we have a minimum wage in this country. You aren't allowed to work for anything less than $7.25 an hour. And free is most definitely less than $7.25 an hour.

"If you're a for-profit employer or you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren't going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law," the Labor Department's Nancy J. Leppink tells the New York Times.

The Times also quotes Trudy Steinfeld, director of New York University's Office of Career Services, regarding opportunities for unpaid internships. "A few famous banks have called and said, 'We'd like to do this,' said Ms. Steinfeld. "I said, 'No way. You will not list on this campus.'"

John Stossel relates his experience with hiring unpaid interns.

When I asked WCBS to hire me a researcher, my bosses looked at me as if I'd asked for the moon. Since they wouldn't pay, I started calling colleges to ask if they had students who wanted internships. Many did. From then on, I got much of my best help from unpaid college students.

Many later moved on to paying jobs at the networks, and many became network TV producers…

At first I felt guilty asking students to work for no pay. But I stopped feeling bad about it after most told me they'd learned more in our newsroom than they'd learned on their campuses. Their schools charge them money, while I taught them for free.

And, he discovered, if you did want to work for free, you couldn't do anything that actually helped your possible future employer. So, a practical demonstration of the value you can add to a business is right out.

[T]he six federal legal criteria that must be satisfied for internships to be unpaid. Among those criteria are that the internship should be similar to the training given in a vocational school or academic institution, that the intern does not displace regular paid workers and that the employer "derives no immediate advantage" from the intern's activities -- in other words, it's largely a benevolent contribution to the intern.

Perhaps, in the eyes of the Labor Department, it should be a benevolent contribution to the intern, from the business. But what if the intern genuinely wants to help, in exchange for the possibility of a job? What if the intern wants to create a great resume that can be used to stand out from the pack when applying for the next job? Doesn't the intern have any choice about how and when he can sell his labor? And for what price?

As I see it, the minimum wage is hurting those who want to work hard, who want to stand out. The minimum wage isn't bad because it hurts employers. It's bad because it hurts those who want to be their employees.

Crist Makes Break With GOP - WSJ.com

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist formally launched his bid for a U.S. Senate seat as an independent candidate Thursday evening, abandoning the Republican primary and casting himself as the outsider in a "broken" political system.

Apparently, the political system is "broken" because the political system no longer wants Charlie Crist. Good to know.

The Dividend Tax Bill Arrives - WSJ.com

As the big tax increase day of January 1, 2011 approaches, the Democrats running Congress are beginning to lay out their priorities. Get ready for bigger rate increases than previously advertised.

Last week the Senate Budget Committee passed a fiscal 2011 budget resolution that includes an increase in the top tax rate on dividends to 39.6% from the current 15%—a 164% increase. This blows past the 20% rate that President Obama proposed in his 2011 budget and which his economic advisers promised on these pages in 2008.

(See "The Obama Tax Plan," August 14, 2008, by Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee: "The tax rate on dividends would also be 20% for families making more than $250,000, rather than returning to the ordinary income rate.")

And that's only for starters. The recent health-care bill includes a 3.8% surcharge on all investment income, including dividends, beginning in 2013. This would nearly triple the top dividend rate to 43.4% in Mr. Obama's four years as President.

Do you think this will

a) encourage me to put more money into the stock market
b) encourage me to put my money somewhere else
c) encourage companies to pay out more money as dividends to stockholders
d) encourage companies to put their money somewhere else
e) both "b" and "d"

If you said "e", you're right. And, when the economy keeps failing to recover from the recession, you may try asking Nancy Pelois, Harry Reid, and President Obama if they have any idea what could have caused people to just sit on their money for a while. If you have a 401(k) account, you might also try asking them why they're trying to torch your retirement savings.

Finally, if you live in Wisconsin, you may want to give Senator Russ Feingold a call. He's up for re-election this year and he sits on the Senate Budget Committee. You might want to put those questions to him too. You can reach his local, Madison, office at (608) 828-1200. If you'd prefer email, his address is russell_feingold@feingold.senate.gov. If you'd prefer snail mail, you can send it to:

1600 Aspen Commons
Middleton, WI 53562-4716

I'm very passionate about the rights of fathers in American culture. There's been an increasing tendency to try to sweep men under the rug, denigrate their honor, or even demonize them when it comes to their relationships with their children. I've written about this slanted treatment before.

I recently read about how horrifically Dr. Phil treated fathers on a recent episode of his show. What I read was enough to get me angry all over again. (For those who don't understand, try reading the article but substitute "mother" everytime you see "father" in the story and visa-versa. Now does it make you mad?)

In the Creek case, Sarah Creek has repeatedly accused father Sheldon Creek of sexually abusing their daughter.

In the episode, Dr. Phil came down unequivicably on the side of Sarah Creek. In so doing, he overlooked 13 different problems with her allegations.

Problem #1-Sylvia Creek has been examined for possible child sexual abuse on 5 separate occasions, and not one of the examinations has substantiated any of the charges

Problem #2 Child Protective Services has repeatedly investigated accusations against Sheldon Creek, and has never substantiated any of them.

Problem #3: Custody evaluator Sean Jackson, PhD did not believe that Sheldon Creek had molested his daughter.

Problem #4: Sheldon Creek passed an FBI polygraph examination concerning the molestation allegations.

Problem #5 The assertion that Sylvia Creek is being sexually abused and is experiencing great trauma is contradicted by the report of Sylvia Creek's therapist Linda Falcon.

Problem #6: The assertion that Sylvia Creek is being sexually abused and is experiencing great trauma is contradicted by minor's [Sylvia Creek] counsel Dana A., Esq. and Sylvia's teachers and other professionals involved in the case.

Problem #7: Mediator Don Yarborough doesn't believe the molestation accusations.

Problem #8: Angela R., MD examined Sylvia on 8/27/07 and found no evidence of sexual abuse.

Problem #9: Sylvia was examined at the Sutter Hospital Emergency Room on 8/3/05 and no evidence of sexual abuse was found.

Problem #10: Sylvia was examined by Sutter Hospital on 2/14/07 and no evidence of sexual abuse was found.

Problem #11: Sylvia was examined at UC Davis on 8-22/23/06 and on 12/24/07 and again no evidence of sexual abuse was found.

Problem #12: Presiding judge Thomas A. Smith concluded that the molestation charges were false, and noted that "psychological evaluations concluded Sylvia was coached to report incidents of sexual and physical abuse"

Problem # 13: Presiding judge Thomas A. Smith agrees with Sheldon Creek's contention that "Anytime a hearing/trial is scheduled, it is almost a guarantee that in the weeks or months prior, Sarah will make an accusation of abuse."

Given the evidence in this case, it would be hard to conclude that Sheldon is/was molesting his daughter. The enormous amount of time and care that social services and the family court have devoted to examining the sexual abuse allegations and the evidence in general belie the mothers' advocates' contention that courts are biased against mothers or are turning their backs on children abused by their fathers. Five separate sexual abuse examinations failed to find any support for the accusations-how many more should they have been expected to conduct?

... Dr. Phil alleges that a family court has given custody to a child molester, yet the evidence is strong that this is not a molestation case, and the court certainly did not award custody in the case capriciously or without a thorough investigation.

Now, Dr. Phil has accused a man, a father, of sexually molesting his daughter. From the evidence I've seen, that charge is false and Dr. Phil is joining Sarah Creek in an ugly divorce power play. There is nothing honorable or good about such behavior. Dr. Phil should apologize to Sheldon Creek. It is absolutely despicable that he would choose to air such wild allegations with not a shred of substantiating evidence. Our society would rip Dr. Phil's career to shreds if made these allegations against a woman, a mother. But, because he's making them against, a man he'll be applauded for his courage and his willingness to be a protector.

Shameful.

Can you trust the police? What about the courts? The answer may depend on whether or not they think anyone is watching.

Last March, after the University of Maryland men's basketball team beat Duke, students spilled out into College Park to celebrate. That brought out the riot police. In footage captured by several students with their iPhones, Maryland student Jack McKenna dances down the street with dozens of other students, then stops when he sees two cops on horseback. Unprovoked by McKenna, three riot cops then enter the picture, throw McKenna up against a wall, and begin beating him with their batons. According to attorney Christopher Griffiths—who is representing McKenna and another student, Benjamin Donat—both suffered concussions, contusions, and cuts from the beatings.

McKenna was charged with disorderly conduct, a charge that as of last week was still pending but now seems certain to be dropped. Prince George's County has since suspended four police officers, the three captured on tape beating McKenna and the sergeant who supervised them. But were it not for those iPhone videos, it would have been McKenna's word (and possibly those of whatever celebrating student witnesses he could round up) against the word of three of Maryland's finest. Or at least three. It seems likely that a number of other cops would have come forward to lie on behalf of those who beat McKenna.

If that sounds harsh, consider this: After the iPhone video of McKenna's beating emerged, investigators subpoenaed 60 hours of surveillance video from the College Park campus police. The only video police couldn't manage to locate was the one from the camera aimed squarely at the area where McKenna was beaten. Funny how that works. Campus police claimed that a "technical error" with that particular camera caused it to record over the footage of the beating. As public pressure mounted, police later found what they claimed was a recording of the lost video. But two minutes of that video were missing. Coincidentally, those two minutes happened to depict key portions of McKenna's beating. The kicker? The head of the campus video surveillance system, Lt. Joanne Ardovini, is married to one of the cops named in McKenna's complaint. (Washington D.C.'s ABC News affiliate, WJLA, a station with a history of deferring to police spokesmen without bothering to verify the accuracy of their statements, quaintly referred to this as "a bizarre coincidence.")

In another instance, Maryland police raided an individual's home for video tapes after he committed the non-crime of video taping a police officer, on a public highway. The judge who authorized the illegal raid?

According to Graber, the name of the judge who signed off on the raid of his parents' home doesn't appear on the warrant. As Graber told Miller, "They told me they don’t want you to know who the judge is because of privacy." If true, that statement is so absurd it's mind numbing. A judge issued an illegal warrant for police to invade the private residence and rummage through the private belongings of a man who broke no laws, and we aren't permitted to know the judge's name in order to protect the judge's privacy?

Here's the bottom line: government officials, acting in their official capacity, have no right to privacy. You work for us. You have no more privacy rights, in the performance of your job, than any private sector employee in the performance of his job. And you're not above the law either. Wearing a uniform isn't an authorization to go out and beat people -- or otherwise break the law -- with impunity. Period. And, no, having a stressful job isn't a good justification for mistreating American citizens.

Liberals might want to consider that one of the reasons most people don't like government is the behavior of, well, government. Two stories caught my eye this morning.

First: One-Fourth of Nonprofits Are to Lose Tax Breaks - NYTimes.com.

As many as 400,000 nonprofit organizations are weeks away from a doomsday.

At midnight on May 15, an estimated one-fifth to one-quarter of some 1.6 million charities, trade associations and membership groups will lose their tax exemptions, thanks to a provision buried in a 2006 federal bill aimed at pension reform.

"It's going to be an unholy mess once these organizations realize what's happened to them," said Diana Aviv, president of the Independent Sector, a nonprofit trade group.

The federal legislation passed in 2006 required all nonprofits to file tax forms the following year. Previously, only organizations with revenues of $25,000 or more -- or the vast majority of nonprofit groups -- had to file.

The new law, embedded in the 393 pages of the Pension Protection Act of 2006, also directed the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the tax exemptions of groups that failed to file for three consecutive years. Three years have passed, and thus the deadline looms.

Next: I Got a Little More Libertarian Today | The Agitator.

So I got an email from TurboTax this afternoon telling me that my federal tax return has been rejected. Reason? Invalid Social Security number. So I double checked the return. Same Social Security number I've been using since I started paying taxes. Same number that's on my Social Security card. So TurboTax gave me the 800 number of the Social Security Administration so I could call to verify my number. Except that when I called, they told me that they can only verify numbers over the phone for employers, not individuals.

... The kicker: According to the TurboTax help forum I consulted, other people this has happened to say they were fined for filing late, even though they had actually filed on time, and it was the government's fault that their Social Security number was rejected.

Health Care Cost Increase Is Projected for New Law - NYTimes.com

A government analysis of the new health care law says it will not slow the overall growth of health spending because the expansion of insurance and services to 34 million people will offset cost reductions in Medicare and other programs.

The study, by the chief Medicare actuary, Richard S. Foster, provides a detailed, rigorous analysis of the law.

In signing the measure last month, President Obama said it would "bring down health care costs for families and businesses and governments."

But Mr. Foster said, "Overall national health expenditures under the health reform act would increase by a total of $311 billion," or nine-tenths of 1 percent, compared with the amounts that would otherwise be spent from 2010 to 2019.

This analysis isn't really a surprise to me. It seems pretty obvious that adding lots and lots to uninsured people to Medicare will increase costs by quite a bit. And, this picture, is actually a best case scenario. It assumes that politicians won't act like politicians.

Mr. Foster says the law will save Medicare more than $500 billion in the coming decade and will postpone exhaustion of the Medicare trust fund by 12 years, so it would run out of money in 2029, rather than 2017. In addition, he said, the reduction in the growth of Medicare will lead to lower premiums and co-payments for Medicare beneficiaries.

But, Mr. Foster said, these savings assume that the law will be carried out as written, and that may be an unrealistic assumption. The cuts, he said, "could become unsustainable" because they may drive some hospitals and nursing homes into the red, "possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries."

If you believe that politicians are actually going to cut payments to Medicare physicians and hospitals, then you obviously haven't been paying attention to the votes that have been taken in Washington over the last two decades. Congress loves to talk about cutting payments to Medicare. Then, every time the cuts come due, there's a bipartisan rush to postpone the cuts. Government spending is going up. Way up.

Obamacare delenda est

The government wants to run your healthcare. At the very least, they want more control over the companies that do run your healthcare. They want more control because they think the existing companies are incompetent, greedy, or both. But how is government doing with the healthcare they already run?

Not well.

FOXNews.com - VA Claims Office Takes SNAFU to a New Level

Last month, a decorated Gulf War hero received a letter from the Veterans Affairs Administration that said: We are working on your claim for menstrual disorder.

There was just one problem: The claim was submitted for fibromyalgia.

Make that two problems: The claim was submitted by Glenn McBride, a 40-year-old man from Roanoke, Va., who most definitely does not get menstrual cramps.

... Jim Strickland, a veterans advocate who writes a regular health care benefits column on VAWatchdog.org and has his own benefits-related Web site, said he wasn't at all surprised to learn of McBride's "menstrual" letter. "There are 57 regional offices and every one is operating in total chaos and in crisis," he said. "Full frontal mass chaos. Every day."

Contacted in the middle of the week, Strickland said he'd already received two e-mails from veterans who were mailed the records of other veterans. And he provided his most ridiculous example of a nonsensical claims letter, one that managed to try to collect debt and to discuss overpaying the same debt -- at the same time.

Strickland says the problem at the root of letters like McBride's is a bonus structure paid out to VA claims employees.

"The more work, the better the bonus is," he said. "It's strictly volume, not quality driven. There is no accountability whatsoever.

"The art of the Teflon Jacket has been perfected at our VA. They are really totally invulnerable to your criticism."

Let's keep the government out of healthcare. Obamacare delenda est.

A revolt grows in Jersey - NYPOST.com

New Jersey voters just sent another loud reminder of their disgust with out-of-control taxes.

Of 537 school budgets up for a vote in the Garden State, 315 -- a whopping 59 percent -- went down in flames Tuesday.

That's more than the state's seen in decades.

Why so many rejections?

Because some 80 percent of those budgets sought property-tax hikes.

As if Jersey isn't already a national leader in property taxes.

As if ObamaCare, the stimulus and Washington's trillion-dollar deficits hadn't sent actual taxpayers into a lather.

Homeowners, in particular, have had enough.

Median tax bills in six Garden State counties are among the 10 highest in all of America. As a share of income, levies in Passaic and Essex lead the nation -- with Bergen, Union, Hunterdon and Hudson not far behind.

School boards -- and teachers unions that refused concessions -- must have been dreaming if they thought voters would rubber-stamp tax hikes yet again.

No, this time taxpayers were paying . . . attention.

Fact is, last November's election of Republican Gov. Chris Christie in Democratic New Jersey was no fluke.

Woo-hoo!

Why We Need Generic Copies of Biologic Drugs - NYTimes.com

we continue to spend more on drugs -- in part because of the increasing use of so-called biologic medicines, which cost, on average, 22 times as much as ordinary drugs. In 2008, 28 percent of sales from the pharmaceutical industry's top 100 products came from biologics; by 2014, that share is expected to rise to 50 percent.

Biologic drugs can be more expensive to manufacture; they are grown inside living cells rather than put together chemically, as conventional drugs are. But this does not fully account for their high prices. Another important factor is that they very rarely face competition from generic copies.

Congress has an opportunity to change this by including in health care reform incentives for generic drug makers to compete in the biologics marketplace. But unfortunately, both the House and the Senate versions of health care reform contain provisions that would discourage the development and significantly delay the approval of generic biologics.

In general, I'm in favor of swinging the pendulum back towards less intellectual property protection. This sounds like a bad idea to me.

Mississippi governor Haley Barbour signed a bill last month requiring all patients to get a prescription before buying any medicine containing pseudoephedrine.

This is insane. This is seriously insane. This law -- and Federal laws requiring Sudafed to be kept behind the pharmacist's counter -- have done nothing to curtail access to meth. These laws have accomplished one thing and one thing only: meth production has been shifted from small labs to super high tech Mexican labs. Meth is still plentiful in the United States. But it's now fueling the growth of Mexican drug gangs and Mexican smugglers. If anything, the status quo ante was better in that it wasn't creating sophisticated cross-border smuggling operations.

Now, every Mississippi resident suffering from allergies, sinuses, or colds will have to go to a doctor before they're able to get any effective relief. Doctors' offices and emergency rooms will become more crowded and the entire state population will be vastly inconvenienced. All for a law that will have no practical effect whatsoever.

For the record, Governor Barbour will not be getting my vote, should he decide to run in the Republican presidential primaries.

"Let me be clear: if you like your doctor, you can keep him". Who hasn't heard the President make that promise by now? The problem is, it makes a huge assumption. That promise assumes that your doctor isn't going to retire as a result of healthcare reform.

The New England Journal of Medicine reports that more than 30% of physicians want to leave medical practice if the current healthcare reform plans are implemented.

In other news, nurses report that they spent 25% of their time doing "indirect patient care".

Nurses reported having to document patient care information in multiple locations, in addition to having to complete logs, checklists and other redundant paperwork that prevented them from having more time with their patients. Beyond these paperwork redundancies, nurses reported significant time being wasted trying to secure needed equipment and supplies.

When asked for solutions to these challenges, nurses recommended a combination of ancillary staff support, hospital-wide communications technology and reductions in redundant regulatory requirements.

Adding more bureaucracy, rules, and paperwork to the medical process is unlikely to make things better. Doctors may quit and nurses may quit. But, by all means, bring on the healthcare reform. If you like your doctor, the President has promised you can keep him. And the President is an honorable man.

The Myth of the Recovery

The gains on Wall Street have been goosed largely by government spending and guarantees, not the usual private sector–funded growth. And federal spending cannot continue indefinitely without deficits and debt service spiraling out of control. John Silvia, chief economist for Wells Fargo, says, “We have seen a recovery, but it’s driven primarily by federal spending and special federal projects. The character of this recovery is very different than we’re used to.”

Consider that 37 percent of the third-quarter GDP growth was due to motor vehicle purchases, which were stimulated almost entirely by the Cash for Clunkers program. “The third quarter was really just a lot of Cash for Clunkers spending that won’t be sustained in the foreseeable future,” Silvia says. (Final statistics for fourth quarter spending were not available at press time.)

The car scheme, an attempt to jump-start the bankrupt auto industry, offered consumers a government-funded credit of up to $4,500 if they traded in their gas guzzlers for more eco-friendly vehicles. But since most participants probably were already planning to buy a new car, the program essentially shifted future demand for automobiles to the third quarter of 2009. Instead of continuing to grow, car sales dropped 34 percent immediately after the program ended. Figure 1 shows U.S. auto sales in 2009 largely following the 10-year average month-to-month change until the Cash for Clunkers credit jolted demand, followed by a subnormal drop.

This is not real growth. It’s the national equivalent of a credit-card buying spree, with the bills—in the form of debt service and unfunded liabilities—to be paid off later. It is a faux recovery.

Insurer's Gone Wild

"We allow the insurance industry to run wild in this country," President Obama declared on Monday. "We can't have a system that works better for the insurance companies than it does for the American people."

Yet Obama's plan to tame health insurers would boost their business, protect them from competition, and guarantee their profits, all at the expense of consumers and taxpayers. It is therefore not surprising that the insurance companies, while they object to the president's rhetoric and quibble over some of the details, are happy to be domesticated. Here are five ways in which Obama would help insurers while pretending to fight them.

There's nothing progressive about a plan that forces people to buy products from specific companies, under penalty of law. And there's nothing conservative about that plan either. It guarantees profits, eliminates risks, and rips off the American public. Is it any wonder that the American public opposes this plan 2-1?

Question for the President | Cato @ Liberty

The rationale for your proposed tax on high-cost health insurance plans is that it would encourage people to purchase less-comprehensive coverage and thereby reduce health care spending.

If that’s a good idea, then why is it bad when insurers raise premiums?

Obviously, it's because consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. You small minded libertarian twerp. Duh: it's good when the government raises prices and it's bad when the market does. Any more questions?

Sending a Message with the Census - Mark Krikorian - The Corner on National Review Online

Fully one-quarter of the space on this year's form is taken up with questions of race and ethnicity, which are clearly illegitimate and none of the government's business (despite the New York Times' assurances to the contrary on today's editorial page). So until we succeed in building the needed wall of separation between race and state, I have a proposal. Question 9 on the census form asks "What is Person 1's race?" (and so on, for other members of the household). My initial impulse was simply to misidentify my race so as to throw a monkey wrench into the statistics; I had fun doing this on the personal-information form my college required every semester, where I was a Puerto Rican Muslim one semester, and a Samoan Buddhist the next. But lying in this constitutionally mandated process is wrong. Really — don't do it.

Instead, we should answer Question 9 by checking the last option — "Some other race" — and writing in "American." It's a truthful answer but at the same time is a way for ordinary citizens to express their rejection of unconstitutional racial classification schemes. In fact, "American" was the plurality ancestry selection for respondents to the 2000 census in four states and several hundred counties.

So remember: Question 9 — "Some other race" — "American". Pass it on.

There's also a completely unaffiliated Facebook group, to show your support for "Some other race" -- "American".

I know what I'll be doing when we get our Census forms next week.

Be still my beating heart. No, wait. Start beating, my stilled heart. Barney Frank just recommended killing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

"As I believe this committee will be recommending, abolishing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in their present form and coming up with a new whole system of housing finance [is in order]," House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D, Mass.) said at a hearing.

This is the same Congressman Frank that previously refused to believe that anything could possibly be wrong with Fannie and Freddie.

"These two entities--Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

And this is the same Fannie and Freddie that the government is bailing out, with no limits whatsoever on the losses to the American taxpayer.

The Obama administration's decision to cover an unlimited amount of losses at the mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the next three years stirred controversy over the holiday.

The Treasury announced Thursday it was removing the caps that limited the amount of available capital to the companies to $200 billion each.

Unlimited access to bailout funds through 2012 was "necessary for preserving the continued strength and stability of the mortgage market," the Treasury said. Fannie and Freddie purchase or guarantee most U.S. home mortgages and have run up huge losses stemming from the worst wave of defaults since the 1930s.

Of course, this is Barney Frank we're talking about here. I shudder to think about what he has in mind to replace Fannie and Freddie. Whatever it is, be sure that you'll be paying for it, not him. You'll probably be paying a lot.