Minor Thoughts from me to you

Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus - New York Times

In 1988, the surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, proclaimed ice cream to a be public-health menace right up there with cigarettes. Alluding to his office's famous 1964 report on the perils of smoking, Dr. Koop announced that the American diet was a problem of "comparable" magnitude, chiefly because of the high-fat foods that were causing coronary heart disease and other deadly ailments.

That was a ludicrous statement, as Gary Taubes demonstrates in his new book meticulously debunking diet myths, "Good Calories, Bad Calories" (Knopf, 2007).

It may seem bizarre that a surgeon general could go so wrong. After all, wasn't it his job to express the scientific consensus? But that was the problem. Dr. Koop was expressing the consensus. He, like the architects of the federal "food pyramid" telling Americans what to eat, went wrong by listening to everyone else. He was caught in what social scientists call a cascade.

Because of this effect, groups are surprisingly prone to reach mistaken conclusions even when most of the people started out knowing better, according to the economists Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer and Ivo Welch. If, say, 60 percent of a group's members have been given information pointing them to the right answer (while the rest have information pointing to the wrong answer), there is still about a one-in-three chance that the group will cascade to a mistaken consensus.

In the Battle Against Cancer, Researchers Find Hope in a Toxic Wasteland - New York Times

Death sits on the east side of this city, a 40-billion-gallon pit filled with corrosive water the color of a scab. On the opposite side sits the small laboratory of Don and Andrea Stierle, whose stacks of plastic Petri dishes are smeared with organisms pulled from the pit. Early tests indicate that some of those organisms may help produce the next generation of cancer drugs.

For decades, scientists assumed that nothing could live in the Berkeley Pit, a hole 1,780 feet deep and a mile and a half wide that was one of the world's largest copper mines until 1982, when the Atlantic Richfield Company suspended work there. The pit filled with water that turned as acidic as vinegar, laced with high concentrations of arsenic, aluminum, cadmium and zinc.

Today it is one of the harshest environments in the country. When residents speak of the pit, they often recall the day in 1995 when hundreds of geese landed on the water and promptly died.

But the pit itself is far from dead. Over the last decade, Mr. Stierle said, the couple have found 142 organisms living in it and have "isolated 80 chemical compounds that exist nowhere else."

Panel Sees Problems in Ethanol Production - New York Times

Greater cultivation of crops to produce ethanol could harm water quality and leave some regions of the country with water shortages, a panel of experts is reporting. And corn, the most widely grown fuel crop in the United States, might cause more damage per unit of energy than other plants, especially switchgrass and native grasses, the panel said.

The report noted that additional use of fertilizers and pesticides could pollute water supplies and contribute to the overgrowth of aquatic plant life that produces "dead zones" like those in the Chesapeake Bay, the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere.

Book now for the flight to nowhere - Times Online

An Indian entrepreneur has given a new twist to the concept of low-cost airlines. The passengers boarding his Airbus 300 in Delhi do not expect to go anywhere because it never takes off.

In a country where 99% of the population have never experienced air travel, the "virtual journeys" of Bahadur Chand Gupta, a retired Indian Airlines engineer, have proved a roaring success.

"Some of my passengers have crossed the country to get on this plane," says Gupta, who charges about £2 each for passengers taking the "journey".

The Odyssey Years - New York Times

People who were born before 1964 tend to define adulthood by certain accomplishments -- moving away from home, becoming financially independent, getting married and starting a family.

In 1960, roughly 70 percent of 30-year-olds had achieved these things. By 2000, fewer than 40 percent of 30-year-olds had done the same.

Overlawyered: Welcome to West Virginia: Joe Meadows v. Go-Mart

Joe Meadows was drunk. Very drunk. 0.296 percent blood-alcohol content drunk, 12 or 13 beers worth. Fortunately, he didn't drive in that state. Unfortunately, he chose to sleep it off by resting under a parked 18-wheel truck. More unfortunately, the driver, Doug Rader, who didn't check to see whether there might be drunks lying under his truck at 1:40 a.m., ran over Meadows. Rader had EMT training, and was able to save Meadows's life, but Meadows lost a leg, and sued both the truck company and the store that owned the parking lot. A Kanawha County jury decided that Meadows was only a third responsible for his injury, which means he "only" gets two thirds of the three million dollars they awarded.

What is Orthodoxy? (Part 1, Part 2)

What is the "orthodoxy" in our "humble orthodoxy" anyway? What do we mean when we say "orthodoxy?" "What must we agree upon? What are the basics, what are the essentials?"

Now this is a dangerous question. And we have to proceed very carefully here, because if you take this wrong, this question can sound a little like the teenager in the youth group asking, "How far can I go? What's the least I have to believe and still be considered a Christian? What can I get away with?" Friends, that is not the spirit in which I'm posing this question. You want to pursue truth in every single matter about which God has revealed Himself in His word. If He's gone to the trouble of revealing Himself, you should care as a Christian, you should want to understand it, so that you can know more about who this God is that you're worshiping.

Part of what we need for doctrinal discernment is to understand what must be agreed upon and how serious errors are. Because you know not all errors are created equal--they're not all the same. We need to understand the significance of the doctrine that is in question.

... So God, the Bible, the gospel.

Those are the things that we must agree upon to have meaningful cooperation as Christians. True Christian fellowship cannot be had with someone who disagrees with us on these matters. These are the essential of the essentials.

Finally, for Adam, Pastor John Piper's view of Ayn Rand's philosophy. Several years ago, after I read Adam's copy of Atlas Shrugged, I disagreed with her view of altruism. But I couldn't put my feelings into words. Now I find that John Piper has.

Atlas Shrugged Fifty Years Later :: Desiring God

My Ayn Rand craze was in the late seventies when I was a professor of Biblical Studies at Bethel College. I read most of what she wrote both fiction and non-fiction. I was attracted and repulsed. I admired and cried. I was blown away with powerful statements of what I believed, and angered that she shut herself up in what Jonathan Edwards called the infinite provincialism of atheism. Her brand of hedonism was so close to my Christian Hedonism and yet so far--like a satellite that comes close to the gravitational pull of truth and then flings off into the darkness of outer space.

Sentences like these made me want to scream. No. No. No. Altruism (treating someone better than he deserves) does not have to involve "betraying your values" or "sacrificing a greater value to a lesser one." In other words, I agreed with her that we should never sacrifice a greater value to a lesser one. But I disagreed that mercy (returning good for evil) always involved doing that.

Staying warm will be more expensive this winter -- 10-22% more expensive.

That's the sobering message from an Energy Department report Tuesday that estimates heating oil costs are likely to jump 22 percent and natural gas bills, on average, will rise 10 percent between October and March.

Why? Well, a continuing lack of sufficient U.S. refinery capacity, apparently.

Surging crude oil prices are the primary, but not the only, culprit for the jump in fuel oil costs. This spring and summer, American refineries experienced an unusual number of unexpected maintenance outages. The net result was that fewer refineries were producing gasoline, heating oil and other petroleum products.

The outages sent gasoline prices to a record $3.227 a gallon in late May as refiners scrambled to produce enough gasoline to meet peak summer driving demand.

"Because they used every ounce of the refinery to produce gasoline, it came at the expense of distillate fuels" like home heating oil, said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago.

All of the demand for natural gas is boosting supplies, however. That could push prices down in a year or two.

Despite the government forecast, natural gas futures prices have actually been mostly falling in recent weeks. Inventories remained high as new sources of natural gas were tapped this year and a cooler summer depressed demand.

"We could have all-time record storage by the beginning of February," said Tim Evans, an analyst at Citigroup Inc. in New York.

On the other hand, supplies coming on line this year, including Anadarko Petroleum Corp.'s Independence Hub platform in the Gulf of Mexico and a portion of the huge Rockies Express natural gas pipeline project, are expected to boost natural gas supplies by 2 billion to 2.5 billion cubic feet.

"That's a lot of supply coming on," Denhardt said.

Finally, there's this poignant note:

Penny Taylor, who spent about $350 a month last winter to heat her Sarasota, Fla., home with electric heat, blanched when she heard about Tuesday's price forecast from the Energy Department.

"I think we're going to have to get a lot of blankets, because there's no way we'll be able to afford to run the heat," she said.

Everyone living north of the Mason-Dixon line weeps for you, Ms. Taylor. (I think she meant to say "there's no way we'll be able to afford to run the heat as high as we'd like to". We must all practice frugality, even with heating and cooling.)

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle said today he would call the state Legislature into special session to consider a compromise budget bill.

The Legislature is 100 days late in passing a new, two-year budget, and Wisconsin is the only state without a taxing and spending plan. Without a budget, the state continues at last year's taxing and spending levels.

Leaders of the Republican-led Assembly and the Democratic-led Senate have met in private with Doyle aides for more than two weeks but have not reached a compromise. The closed-door talks began at Doyle's insistence after a larger group of negotiators had previously made no progress in resolving differences between the two chamber's budget proposals.

The compromise bill Doyle said he would introduce for the special session is still being drafted. But he said it would include the full cigarette tax increase, a $418 million tax on hospitals and $430 million in spending cuts compared to his original $58.2 billion budget proposal. It would also include a transfer of an undisclosed amount from the medical malpractice fund.

The bill would not include Doyle's proposed tax on oil company revenues or deal with the state's road fund, which he said would be dealt with in a later special session.

Doyle also said his compromise would not include a $15 billion universal health-care plan proposed by Senate Democrats or an increase he previously proposed in a tax on people selling their homes.

I dunno. I still prefer going on with no new budget. The state will continue operating under the old one -- which means no new taxes and no new spending. I can think of worse things that could happen.

The Recess Supervisor has some commentary on the situation:

Mind you, Jim Doyle is currently working in a political environment where Corky Thatcher would look like Albert Einstein. What he's doing isn't exactly hard. He sits back, watches both sides look like idiots for three months, and now comes in to play the role of serious grown-up. The press and the public afford him all kinds of clout because Mike Huebsch and Judy Robson look like a couple of third-graders fighting over the lead in the school play.

Doyle, of course, is effectively forcing the AssGOP to show its hand. For months, Mike Huebsch has talked about compromise, while members of his caucus like Steve Nass are slipping out the back door and giving word to the base that the caucus isn't going to compromise and doesn't care if we have a budget. So there's seems to be a bit of disagreement on where, exactly, the AssGOP caucus stands on the budget.

I'm not saying that Doyle's bill can't be improved upon, or that further compromises cannot or should not be made. But it's high time that the AssGOP decides once and for all to fish or cut bait on this budget, and live with the consequences either way. Either it accepts that compromising with Democrats means raising some taxes, or it walks away for good and takes its case to the voters.

My money is on fish. There aren't enough zealots in that caucus to hold progress up.

Above: That is not Tony Snow. Not Depicted: Fan blowing her hair.

Below: Who cares? Not Depicted: Fan blowing their hair.

So, by now you've undoubtedly noticed (yeah, like fun you have) that radio and television veteran Tony Snow is no longer supplying the U.S. with its daily news from the White House. Mr. Snow vacated the position of White House Press Secretary on September 14th, citing his current level of pay as the reason; he informs us $168,000 per year is too small a stipend on which to raise his family (I'm actually not making this up). Let's all just give thanks real quick Mr. Snow was President Bush's Press Secretary, rather than his Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Leaving all that aside, however, I'm going to miss Mr. Snow. When the personality first took over the position of White House spokesperson, he was a breath of the freshest air, replacing former Press Secretary Scott McClellan's absolutely abominable performances with a friendly and unflappable show. McClellan seemed incapable or too scared of thinking outside of his pre-written script. He'd often repeat its wordage several times over the course of one interview to a plethora of very different questions, as though it were a magical chant that would eventually make all the bad reporters with their mean questions just - go - away. In short, the man was a dull robot.

Not so Mr. Snow: As a major player in news broadcasting, he had no problem dealing with his former brothers and sisters of the press - and what's more, he could keep his sense of humor as he did it.

From the 24th of '06:

MR. SNOW: [Saddam Hussein] willingly accepted the feeding tube today. It will be in, at a minimum, until Thursday. It has to be in for reasons that I don’t understand for 72 hours.

[REPORTER]: I don’t know the specifics, but how does one willingly accept a feeding tube?

MR. SNOW: I guess, you say, do you want a feeding tube? And he says, yes. And they say, okay, we’re going to give you one. This apparently was a consensual feeding tubing.

I wrote over a year ago on this site that "I can’t believe it; reading a press briefing transcript is no longer headache-inducing. Even if the next president is a Democrat, he/she should keep this guy." It's too bad his extreme poverty has led him from us.

That said, onto the much-begged question: how well's his replacement stack up?

Well, she's certainly easier to look at; in fact, judging from any picture you'll see of her, and taking into account her fiery temper, Dana Perino has a real shot of knocking out Ann Coulter as premiere Republican sex symbol*.

She's no stranger to the press office, either; she's been Tony Snow's deputy for a while now, so she's definitely up to snuff on how everything works.

But in front of the cameras?

I've already mentioned Ms. Perino's temper. She definitely gets flustered more easily than Snow ever did, and when she's been given a particularly tough stance by the President to defend, that's no help. Reading a transcript of one of her question-and-answer sessions with reporters, you'll be struck by how glad you are that you didn't watch it on television - because it really is that painful. The press pool and the situation in general practically begin out of hand and only deteriorate as the briefing goes on, until finally Helen, apparently altogether forgetting that she's there to interview Perino, starts passionately editorializing on U.S. torture tactics - at which point what is, again, supposed to be a "Q&A;" session totally devolves into outright argument.

Q How do we know that it's over now? How do we know -- there's testimony, there's still testimony, there's secrecy. Do you think that alleged terrorist is not going to know he might be tortured by the U.S.? Our whole methods are so abominable, horrific. And I think we're really a shame.

MS. PERINO: What about the people who cut off the heads of American soldiers and put them on the video --

Q That's horrible. We're not --

MS. PERINO: Yes, really bad. We don't torture. We get the terrorists here and we interrogate them.

Q The Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11, which you keep bringing up...

Occasionally she allows her panic to result in her saying absolutely baffling things, too.

"Q Well, could you ask [the president his opinion on the bill]? I mean --

MS. PERINO: No, I'm not -- I'll see. If I see him I'll ask him.

You'll ask him "if you see him"? Um, Dana - you're his spokesperson.

On the plus side, Ms. Perino's willingness to fight back against a room full of Democrat reporters shows she has enough confidence and knowledge to speak off-script. That's impressive. And her mean streak isn't wholly unappreciated, either. It's rather endearing when she mutters that it's fine by her "if MoveOn.org and the unions, which seems like a match made in heaven, want to get together and waste another two weeks and lots of money to try to pressure votes, when any reasonable person can look at this and realize that in the House they are not going to get those votes to override the President's veto..."

Dana Perino clearly has personality, then, and more importantly, she obviously believes in what she's doing (something Mr. Snow actually didn't have going for him, having freely admitted at his tenure's start that he and the president didn't see eye to eye on all issues). Still, one must remember: there's a difference between calling the White House's press corps on when it crosses the line and establishing a regularly hostile environment, which is the last thing the president needs right now. Perhaps Ms. Perino errs too far in that very direction and bites off heads more often than she should.

Come to think of it, I notice a worrying propensity for her to interrupt reporters before they even finish their questions. If a reporter is jumping on a soap box or taking too long, asking them to hurry it up is obviously within the press secretary's mandate, but many reporters don't seem to manage to get a full sentence out before she starts answering.

Q Dana, do you know if the President has talked to Senator Domenici since Domenici made the --

MS. PERINO: Yes, I believe that Senator Domenici spoke to the President day before yesterday..

She needs to rein in her eagerness.

All told, I'll give her 2 stars out of 4 - serviceable. Perino's no horror like Mr. McClellan but nowhere near a star like Tony Snow. She hasn't yet found her footing on the stage, consequently appears awkward, not in control, grasping - which some might argue to be an accurate representation of the administration at present, but which is certainly not at any rate a helpful one.

Of course, as President Clinton's first press secretary George Stephanopoulos said during his first press briefing: "[This job's] OK... It's, uh... kinda hard."

That it is. One could go further and say the position of White House Press Secretary, like the position of POTUS itself, has the maddening ability to make some of our country's most capable men and women look like totally incompetent morons.

But at least Ms. Perino knows it. From her first solo press briefing on September 17:

Q On a personal note, what are your goals, your aspirations as Press Secretary?

MS. PERINO: Just to get through this.

*Which you wouldn't think would be that difficult. For my money, I never got what Conservatives saw in Ms. Coulter anyway. She's decently pretty, sure, but a skeleton, which doesn't exactly scream "Va voom!", y'know? Now, your correspondents here at Minorthoughts.com could show you "Va voom!", but the women in our lives have informed us quite bluntly they'd better never appear on here.

Above: "Achmed, they've just subpoena'd Osama!"

You could quite justifiably tell me I'm a little late to discuss whether captured terrorists should be allowed full trials according to American law; after all, the Supreme Court ruled the answer to be a big old Yes well over a year ago now.

But I've got something to get off my chest, so I'm gonna give it to the old college try anyway.

Even if you don't remember the reactions to the verdict, I'll bet you can probably imagine them without any help. The Democrats crowed over their latest victory; the Republicans jeered that the Democrat candidate's slogan for 2008 should be "The Party for Terrorists' Rights".

I wasn't one of the jeerers. I certainly wasn't on the side of the Democrats, though, either; despite being apolitical due to my religious beliefs, I still have a bit of the old soft spot left for the grand U.S. o' A, and that being the case, I've always tended to sympathize with Americans more concerned for their own safety than-... well, the safety of people who hate them and are trying to kill them. I'd write "That's not so hard to understand, is it?", but for today's Democrats, the answer stupefyingly seems to be yes. Their own soft spot for Lady Liberty hardened over a long time ago, it seems. Bring on the Socialist States of America.

I digress. I didn't want to support the bozos; I didn't quite feel right about supporting the conservatives. So I never entered into that particular debate.

I really should have. The answer was clear from the get-go - and the answer is, quite embarrassingly, exactly what the bozos and the Supreme Court justices have been saying all along.

It's also right there in the United States' Declaration of Independence, written in simply lovely penmanship:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

The conservative argument for terrorists' lack of speedy trial and non-Geneva treatment has always been, at its core, that the terrorists are (a) not playing by the rules which guarantees them protection by the law and (b) are at any rate not Americans, thus not subject to its laws.

But the second objection is obvious poppycock, because one of the most beautifully brazen acts of the Declaration of Independence is not simply to declare Americans endowed with inalienable rights, but men (and later, we logically extrapolated "men" to include women). It's not just a smack in the face to anybody who would oppress us; it's a smack in the face to anybody who oppresses anybody else!

The first objection likewise doesn't hold up to any logical scrutiny. Basically, the Geneva Convention is a set of agreements amongst nations to treat each other's soldiers well, should they end up fighting, since those soldiers are fighting on behalf of their governments. It's a special dispensation of extra rights to soldiers ("Your uniformed citizens can kill ours without being criminally charged if our uniformed citizens can kill yours."). A theoretically good idea.

However, you can't enforce such a contract except by - er, force, which is a fairly useless threat in circumstances where the revocation of the Convention is an issue in the first place. That being the case, if one army decides not to play the game by Convention rules, the only proper response is to hit them with what the Geneva Convention was meant to protect them from: criminal charges.

Thus losing coverage under the Geneva Convention simply returns a killer to civilian status, to be tried under civilian law.

There, now. It all makes sense, doesn't it?

Yes. I think so, too.

I just wish I'd thought so before now. Sorry about that, Libs; score one for you.

Yesterday, I read a very interesting op-ed about universal coverage: Bad Medicine For Health Care.

Individual mandate supporters typically justify the policy by citing the problem of uncompensated care. When uninsured patients receive health services but don't pay for them, the rest of us end up footing the bill one way or another. So advocates of insurance mandates contend, plausibly enough, that we should make the free riders pay.

But how big is the free-rider problem, really? According to an Urban Institute study released in 2003, uncompensated care for the uninsured constitutes less than 3% of all health expenditures. Even if the individual mandate works exactly as planned, that's the effective upper boundary on the mandate's impact.

Savings of less than 3%? That doesn't sound so good.

What about the states that mandate minimum coverage levels? Surely that does some good?

Some proposals couple mandates with subsidies for the purchase of private insurance. As far as policies to encourage more private coverage go, you could do worse. But as long as the public has to subsidize the formerly uninsured, the problem with free riders has not been solved. We're just paying for them in a different way.

Even now, every state has a list of benefits that any health-insurance policy must cover--from contraception to psychotherapy to chiropractic to hair transplants. All states together have created nearly 1,900 mandated benefits. Of course, more generous benefits make insurance more expensive. A 2007 study estimates existing mandates boost premiums by more than 20%.

Oops. Maybe if we allowed people to buy only the coverage that they actually needed, more people could afford coverage.

Finally,

Some people will not comply: 47 states require drivers to buy liability auto insurance, yet the median percentage of uninsured drivers in those states is 12%. Granted, that number might be even higher without the mandates. The point, however, is that any amount of noncompliance reduces the efficacy of the mandate.

Let's assume that 12% of the U.S. populace ignores an individual mandate and doesn't buy health coverage. What's 12% of 300 million people? Oh, about 36,000,000 people. That's about the number of people in the U.S. that currently don't have healthcare.

I'm supremely skeptical that passing universal healthcare will do much to help Americans get better healthcare.

I've written before that I'm a fan of the FairTax -- it's a flat consumption tax would do a lot to boost tax compliance, boost U.S. exports, and reduce complexity. So, it was with some interest that I read a New York Times article on a new proposal for a consumption tax. It only took me a few seconds to be horrified by what I read.

By replacing federal income taxes with a steeply progressive consumption tax, the United States could erase the federal deficit, stimulate additional savings, pay for valuable public services and reduce overseas borrowing -- all without requiring difficult sacrifices from taxpayers.

First of all, the words "steeply progressive" send chills up and down my spine -- and not chills of excitement. But let's ignore that for a moment. How is it possible to simultaneously erase the deficit, provide brand new services, and eliminate borrowing -- all without requiring difficult sacrifices from taxpayers?

As far as I call, it's not possible.

Under such a tax, people would report not only their income but also their annual savings, as many already do under 401(k) plans and other retirement accounts. A family's annual consumption is simply the difference between its income and its annual savings. That amount, minus a standard deduction -- say, $30,000 for a family of four -- would be the family's taxable consumption. Rates would start low, like 10 percent. A family that earned $50,000 and saved $5,000 would thus have taxable consumption of $15,000. It would pay only $1,500 in tax. Under the current system of federal income taxes, this family would pay about $3,000 a year.

That's great for low-income families. What about high income families?

Consider a family that spends $10 million a year and is deciding whether to add a $2 million wing to its mansion. If the top marginal tax rate on consumption were 100 percent, the project would cost $4 million. The additional tax payment would reduce the federal deficit by $2 million. Alternatively, the family could scale back, building only a $1 million addition. Then it would pay $1 million in additional tax and could deposit $2 million in savings. The federal deficit would fall by $1 million, and the additional savings would stimulate investment, promoting growth. Either way, the nation would come out ahead with no real sacrifice required of the wealthy family, because when all build larger houses, the result is merely to redefine what constitutes acceptable housing. With a consumption tax in place, most neighbors would also scale back the new wings on their mansions.

Uh-huh. That's a mind-blowing definition of "no real sacrifice". Give the rich an "inventive" to build smaller houses and they'll be better off because they won't have to compete with other rich people to build ever bigger houses. Wow.

Let's also look at the idea that expanding a house isn't investment. Expanding a house results in jobs for construction workers, foremen, and architects. It results in orders for more bricks, lumber, plaster, flooring, roofing, insulation, etc. Isn't that beneficial to the economy?

The alternative to spending money how they want is that people save more, whether in banks or investment accounts. That would make credit cheaper for all kinds of borrowers -- mortgage borrowers, automotive borrowers, education borrowers, home improvement borrowers, and businesses of all kinds.

What are people going to do with these cheap new loans? Buy things, I suppose. In the end, isn't consumption just another form of investment?

Let me clear: I think this particular consumption tax is a horrid idea. Wealth isn't the measure of how much money someone has in their bank account, it's the measure of much useful things they have. What good does $20,000 in the bank do me, if I can't use it to buy a bigger house, a bigger car, a better education, or a holiday in the Wisconsin Dells? It seems that this tax would encourage me to save, then penalize me for enjoying my savings.

Sounds like social engineering dressed up as tax policy -- exactly what I dislike about current state of income taxes.

I vote "No".

Courtesy of The Jerusalem Post's Blog Central:

"Yale’s chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon, another fraternity, garnered infamy in 1967 for branding new pledges with hot coat-hangers... The Yale Daily News reported the incident, quoting one DKE brother who called the branding ‘insignificant’."

That brother lived on, of course, to be our 43rd president, Mr. George W. Bush, Class of '68. Which raises the following fascinating possibilities:

1: When President Bush claims the US does not treat terrorists inhumanely, and human rights activists claims the US does, is it possible this is all simply a misunderstanding, and what most of us wimps would call "torture", President Bush just thinks of as good old-fashioned hazing? Is the liberal media withholding photos of Iraqis chugging beer by executive order?

And:

2: Does our commander-in-chief have a question mark on his bum?

President Bush has cannily refused to comment, possibly in an attempt to increase interest in his forthcoming presidential library. Only conjecture is therefore currently possible, and even too much of that probably wouldn't be healthy. But comfortingly, it can be safely said that the truth will eventually come out, as while men of power in America may opt to take their secrets to the grave, we know our representatives in the media are perfectly willing to follow them there.

Everyone "knows" that Canadian's get better healthcare than Americans do. After all, not only do Canadians live longer but their healthcare is free too!

Recently, June O'Neill and Dave O'Neill submitted a new working paper to NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research), comparing the U.S. and Canadian healthcare systems. Their results may surprise you.

First,

It turns out that once we condition on infant birth weight -- a significant predictor of infant health -- the U.S. has equivalent infant mortality rates. In fact U.S. infant mortality is lower for low-birthweight babies than Canadian infant mortality for low birthweight babies. Overall infant mortality, however, is higher in the U.S. because the incidence of babies with low birthweight is higher than in Canada. This may be due to demographic or epidemiological factors, or it may be the case that the U.S. is better at having a live birth for a low birthweight baby.

Second,

Why do Canadians live longer? One reason is due to the excess number of accidents and homicides in the U.S. compared to Canada. In fact 50%-85% of the mortality gap between American and Canadian adults in their twenties can be explained by the increased American accident/homicide rates. For people over 50, 30-50% of the difference in age-specific mortality rates can be attributed to the excess number of heart disease patients in the U.S. These heart disease findings are more likely driven by American lifestyle choices rather than the efficacy of the U.S. medical system.

Moving to Canada won't increase the quality of your healthcare nearly as much as you think it will.

Robert Hanson suggests that we cut our healthcare spending by up to 50%. Why?

Am I being too allegorical? Then let me speak plainly: our main problem in health policy is a huge overemphasis on medicine. The U.S. spends one sixth of national income on medicine, more than on all manufacturing. But health policy experts know that we see at best only weak aggregate relations between health and medicine, in contrast to apparently strong aggregate relations between health and many other factors, such as exercise, diet, sleep, smoking, pollution, climate, and social status. Cutting half of medical spending would seem to cost little in health, and yet would free up vast resources for other health and utility gains. To their shame, health experts have not said this loudly and clearly enough.

So I want to say loudly and clearly what has yet to be said loudly and clearly enough: In the aggregate, variations in medical spending usually show no statistically significant medical effect on health. (At least they do not in studies with enough good controls.) It has long been nearly a consensus among those who have reviewed the relevant studies that differences in aggregate medical spending show little relation to differences in health, compared to other factors like exercise or diet. I not only want to make this point clearly; I want to dare other health policy experts to either publicly agree or disagree with this claim and its apparent policy implications.

How much could we cut? For the U.S. it seems reasonable to project the 30% cut in the RAND results to a 50% cut, since the U.S. spends so much more than other nations without obvious extra health gains. I thus claim: we could cut U.S. medical spending in half without substantial net health costs. This would give us the equivalent of an 8% pay raise.

As Hanson notes, his recommendations are not likely to be implemented soon -- or at all. So how can you benefit yourself?

Do you have little voice in health policy or research? Then at least you can change your own medical behavior: if you would not pay for medicine out of your own pocket, then don't bother to go when others offer to pay; the RAND experiment strongly suggests that on average such medicine is as likely to hurt as to help.

If this intrigues you, if you find yourself saying "It can't be true", then do go read the full essay. I just pulled four paragraphs out of a much, much longer argument.

He really does believe that more medicine is as likely to hurt you as it is to help you. Doctors make mistakes, just like everyone else. The best way to reduce your risk of mistakes is to reduce your exposure to hospitals, clinics, and medical professionals. QED.

From the New York Times: Syria Is Said to Be Strengthening Ties to Opponents of Iraq's Government

Syria is encouraging Sunni Arab insurgent groups and former Iraqi Baathists with ties to the leaders of Saddam Hussein's government to organize [in Damascus], diplomats and Syrian political analysts say. By building strong ties to those groups, they say, Syria hopes to gain influence in Iraq before what it sees as the inevitable waning of the American presence there.

In July, former Baathists opposed to the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki scheduled a conference for insurgent groups -- including two of the most prominent, the 1920s Revolution Brigades and Ansar al Sunna -- at the Sahara Resort outside Damascus.

The meeting followed two others in Syria in January that aimed to form an opposition front to the government of Iraq, and an announcement in Damascus in July of the formation of a coalition of seven Sunni Arab insurgent groups with the goal of coordinating and intensifying attacks in Iraq to force an American withdrawal. That coalition has since expanded to incorporate other groups.

The July conference was canceled at the last minute, however, indicating the political perils of Syria's developing strategy. It was called off by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, participants, diplomats and analysts said, primarily because of pressure from Iran.

Iran is Syria's chief ally and a staunch supporter of Iraq's Shiite-dominated government. The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, visited Damascus just days before the conference was to have taken place.

"Iran is the big player in Iraq," said Mr. Hamidi, of Al Hayat, "but it lacks influence on the Baathists and the Sunnis."

That would seem to create a natural opening for Syria, a predominantly Sunni country governed by its own version of the Baath Party. But its relations with the Iraqi Baathists have long been strained. Syria backed Iran in its war with Iraq in the 1980s and supported the United States against Mr. Hussein during the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

Syria has long had a regional strategy of influencing its neighbors' politics by harboring their opposition groups. Washington imposed economic sanctions on Syria in 2004 for, among other things, its support of Hamas and several other militant Palestinian groups.

Suspected of orchestrating the 2005 assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, Syria has also come under increasing pressure from the United States and France for its support of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia.

I can think of two possibilities here, neither of them particularly good. The first is that Syria wants to escape from Iran's shadow. Iran is busy trying to establish influence over Iraq's Shiite parties. Perhaps Syria wants to establish influence of Iraq's Sunni and Baathist parties, in an attempt to outflank Iran. However, I just don't see Syria having the will to actually go against Iran.

The second possibility is that Iran is using Syria to establish even more control over Iraq. While Iran establishes influence over the Shiite parties, Syria establishes influence over the Sunni parties. Together, they play the Iraqi government like fiddles.

Perhaps. The whole situation is muddled by the fact that Iran told Syria to knock it. Pique at Syria's attempts? Wanting to hide the strategy before it gets too obvious? Something else? I don't know, but I'm worried about the whole situation.

About a month ago, the Israeli Defense Force bombed a target inside Syria. This is a bit of a problem for Syria.

If you believe the Syrian foreign minister, then the Israelis flew through the heart of his nation's air defenses--apparently undetected--to strike at targets near the country's eastern border. And it wouldn't be the first time that the IAF has accomplished such a feat; in 2003, Israeli jets struck a Palestinian terrorist complex near Damascus, taking advantage of confusion within the Syrian air defense system to bomb the target and escape, with no reaction from fighters or ground-based air defenses. The success of this particular raid suggests that despite a reported shake-up of the Syria's air defense organization, the system remains incapable of defeating an Israeli attack.

And, making matters worse, the IDF raid apparently included a ground attack, featuring commandos that were (presumably) ferried in by helicopter. While IAF CH-53 Sea Stallions have the range (540 NM) to reach distant targets, getting the chopper(s) and the commandos in and out of enemy territory was indeed an impressive feat. Apparently, the Syrians fared no better against the heliborne element of the mission than they did against the IAF jets. However, given the location of the target area--and initial Syrian comments about Israeli aircraft "coming out of Turkey," it's quite possible that the helicopters (and commando elements) staged from a "foreign" base.

The initial speculation was that the Israeli's were targeting a nuclear facility in Syria. More worisome was the idea that the facility was courtesy of the North Koreans.

But the real stunner in the Times report comes in the sixth paragraph, with this revelation from an unnamed member of the Bush Administration:

One Bush administration official said Israel had recently carried out reconnaissance flights over Syria, taking pictures of possible nuclear installations that Israeli officials believed might have been supplied with material from North Korea. The administration official said Israeli officials believed that North Korea might be unloading some of its nuclear material on Syria.

"The Israelis think North Korea is selling to Iran and Syria what little they have left," the official said. He said it was unclear whether the Israeli strike had produced any evidence that might validate that belief.

The possible transfer of "nuclear material" from North Korea to other rogue states is something we've written about at length, including this most recent installment. Fact is, we don't know the full extent of the "relationship" between Pyongyang, Tehran and Damascus. Clearly, North Korea has been the primary source of ballistic missile technology for both Iran and Syria; both countries have active WMD programs and an interest in acquiring nuclear weapons. But clear evidence of a nuclear transfer has never been offered, at least publicly.

The Israeli attacks looks like a major success for Israel and a major embarrassment for Syria.

Obviously, the Israeli strategy worked; the operation caught Damascus by surprise (there was apparently little reaction from Syria's air defense system); the Israelis inflicted serious damage on the target, and both the F-15I crews and the commandos escaped unscathed. Syria has threatened retaliation, but its options are limited. The odds of Syrian aircraft penetrating Israeli airspace are slim, and a missile strike would invite a devastating response, as would an attack across the Golan Heights.

Still, the Times article leaves a number of questions unanswered. We'll begin with the issue of Israel successfully penetrating Syria's air defense system. While it's happened before, the Syrian air defense network was supposedly re-organized after an embarrassing 2003 Israeli strike against a Palestinian terrorist camp near Damascus. During that raid, the Israelis reportedly exploited confusion over geographic responsibilities within the Syrian defense system. The most recent mission--which involved a much deeper penetration into Syrian territory--suggests that (a) Bashir Assad's air defense network hasn't improved, or (b) the Israelis are using more advanced measures to target the system, and render it impotent.

Then, there's the matter of that commando team. If the Times is correct, those personnel arrived in the target area a day ahead of the fighters, inserted (we'll assume) by Israeli Sea Stallion helicopters. As we've noted before, the successful infiltration of a commando team by helicopter, deep into Syrian territory, is an impressive operational feat, indeed. But getting the commandos (and their choppers) all the way across Syria (and back again), undetected, represents a monumental challenge, even for a state-of-the-art military like the IDF.

The success of the raid has given Iran serious concerns as well.

According to Strategy Page, Iran is a bit upset over the alleged "failure" of Russian air defense systems during the raid. Both Tehran and Damascus have spent billions on radar and missile systems built in Russia, with the assurance that such equipment could defend against an Israeli attack. Complaints that have made their way onto Farsi-language message boards (presumably from Iranian military officers) suggest that the IAF was able to blind Syria's defensive systems, rendering them useless. The Israeli strike package flew across hundreds of miles of Syrian airspace, strike the target and return, unmolested by air defense systems.

Iran's concerns are three-fold. First, there is logical speculation that the recent raid on Syria was a dress rehearsal for an attack on Iran's nuclear sites, although that raid would be larger and much more complex. Secondly, Tehran is footing the bill for Syria's most recent upgrade, the acquisition of the Pantsir-S1 air defense system. Iran is also slated to acquire the system, although initial deliveries were made to Damascus.

Equipped with two 30mm cannon and twelve Tunguska missiles, the Pantsir-S1 was supposed to provide point-defense for high-value targets--like that Syrian nuclear facility. The system's on-board radar can detect medium-altitude targets up to 30 miles away; the Pantsir's cannons are effective against targets up to 10,000 feet, and the missiles have a maximum range of roughly nine miles. In terms of close-in air defense, the Pantsir is supposed to be state-of-the-art, but it (apparently) proved ineffective against the Israeli raid.

Tehran's third concern? The Iranian air defense network is far more chaotic than its Syrian counterpart. In recent years, there have been credible reports about Iranian fighters sent out in pursuit of mystery lights and "UFOs," and near-fratricide incidents involving civilian airliners. If the Israelis were successful in blinding Syria's more centralized system (which covers a relatively small area), then they should have little problem in creating mass confusion within the Iranian network. Assuming that Israel eventually attacks, Iranian air defense crews could find themselves operating in a de-centralized mode, chasing targets that don't exist, and illuminating their radars with the knowledge that an anti-radar missile may be on the way.

Finally, the U.S. recently confirmed to ABC News that Israel did indeed bomb a nuclear facility in Syria.

The September Israeli airstrike on a suspected nuclear site in Syria had been in the works for months, ABC News has learned, and was delayed only at the strong urging of the United States.

In early July the Israelis presented the United States with satellite imagery that they said showed a nuclear facility in Syria. They had additional evidence that they said showed that some of the technology was supplied by North Korea.

One U.S. official told ABC's Martha Raddatz the material was "jaw dropping" because it raised questions as to why U.S. intelligence had not previously picked up on the facility.

Officials said that the facility had likely been there for months if not years.

"Israel tends to be very thorough about its intelligence coverage, particularly when it takes a major military step, so they would not have acted without data from several sources," said ABC military consultant Tony Cordesman.

Some in the administration supported the Israeli action, but others, notably Sect. of State Condoleeza Rice did not. One senior official said the U.S. convinced the Israelis to "confront Syria before attacking."

Officials said they were concerned about the impact an attack on Syria would have on the region. And given the profound consequences of the flawed intelligence in Iraq, the U.S. wanted to be absolutely certain the intelligence was accurate.

Initially, administration officials convinced the Israelis to call off the July strike. But in September the Israelis feared that news of the site was about to leak and went ahead with the strike despite U.S. concerns.

Jules Crittenden wonders what kind of stability the State Department was trying to protect.

There's the stability enforced by dictatorial regimes in places as Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia. There's the stability places like Lebanon and Iraq are barely managing to maintain ... no thanks to Syria, Iran, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Palestinians, etc., but thanks in large part to the Lebanese Army, the Israeli Defense Forces and the United States military. There's the stability of Gaza, accomplished in part when one group of Palestinian terrorists decided to throw the other group of Palestinian terrorists off rooftops, but really thanks to the Israeli Defense Forces, which make it impossible for either group to be much more than a nuisance. There's the stability of the West Bank, where they've had enough.

Anyway, so Israel gets the nod, blows up the Syrian nukes, and what happens? Nothing. Syria is hardly likely to want another humiliating ass-kicking. That leaves terrorism. ... That'd be different.

Just kidding. Except that ever since Israel introduced some stability to Lebanon, Hezbollah hasn't been quite on its game. The Lebs, meanwhile, appear to have watched and learned from the Israelis. Blowing the crap out of terrorists and those who harbor them works. It can actually introduce stability to places where stability had been wanting. So the Lebs have been taking care of business in the camps.

Just for the record, I fully support Israel's actions in humiliating Syria, scaring Iran, and reducing the threat the terrorist nutters in Hezbollah will get the bomb. Thank-you for doing what we won't and thank-you for seeing what we couldn't.

Above: A child exhibiting suspicious behavior.

Proponents of raising the U.S.'s minimum age for legal drivers are having a good week, as recent news stories seemingly lend credence to their dire warnings that today's U.S. drivers are simply too young for the responsibility of being behind the wheel.

Reports of a 4-year old in Wisconsin crashing his parents' SUV into their garage might be easily enough dismissed; after all, SUVs are very famously large vehicles, and even your Minorthoughts.com correspondent's father once dented his Baeur-designed beauty trying to park in his basement's limited space. But now we are told that an 11-year old boy has led Louisiana's state police on a high-speed chase, after an officer of the law tried to ticket him for going 20MPH over the highway speed limit (it was 60; he was doing 80).

One can't blame this egregious violation of road rules on simple lack of driving experience. According to police, the child had been driving without incident for a good six months prior to the time of the incident.

March 2, 2005's edition of USA Today pegs the issue as simply one of brain development:

"For years, researchers suspected that inexperience — the bane of any new driver — was mostly to blame for deadly crashes involving teens. When trouble arose, the theory went, the young driver simply made the wrong move. But in recent years, safety researchers have noticed a pattern emerge — one that seems to stem more from immaturity than from inexperience."

Will the age-uppers finally make some headway? They've got opposition; even some parents, traditionally the party-pooping nemeses of teens everywhere, oppose new laws regarding driving ages. After all, children who can drive themselves around are more useful. The previously-mentioned 11-year old boy was dropping off his disabled father at the hospital and heading over to pick up his mother from work when police noticed him.

I've enjoyed most of the TV shows that Tim Minear has worked on -- Angel, Firefly, Wonderfalls, and Drive. Unfortunately, three of those four were canceled after 13 episodes or less. Fortunately, Tim Minear gets another chance.

"Miracle" -- from 20th Century Fox TV, where Minear and Holland are based with overall deals -- centers on a disgraced former televangelist, a man of no faith, who finds that God is using him to perform real miracles and change lives, starting with his own.

"It's about losing everything and starting over and finding that there is a higher purpose in life," Minear said. "It's about a man who says, 'I don't know how to be good, but I'll try to be better.' "

Televangelism is a familiar territory for Minear, who had an evangelical upbringing in Whittier, Calif., and went to evangelical schools. His father is a radio engineer for religious programming. While he was growing up, Minear often listened to preachers as they taped their programs in his dad's home studio.

"Miracle" also was influenced by the series of sex and accounting fraud scandals that rocked the televangelist industry in the 1980s and brought disgrace to such heavyweights as Jimmy Swaggart, Marvin Gorman and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. Others, like Peter Popoff, were exposed as a sham.

But "Miracle" "is not in any way an indictment to religion," Minear said. "It's a love letter to the religious."

What attracted him to the idea of doing a show about a disgraced televangelist was that "I love the genre, and I love stories about redemption and stories about characters that are slightly cynical and nudged by higher force," Minear said.

I'm already looking forward to it.

_

Above: _Madame Secretary tactfully avoids Kim's gaze.

One interesting fact known by few around the blogosphere about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il is that the feared tyrant is himself a skilled surfer of the World Wide Web.

That's because he never told anybody until this week, when he informed R.O.K. President Moo-hyun during their "historic summit" (if they keep saying it, you will eventually believe it, damn it) that "I'm an internet expert too."

How much of an expert is he? Maddeningly, President Moo-hyun did not take the opportunity to press him on the question, so to what degree, say, North Korea's web page testifies to Kim Jong Il's personal programming savvy remains unknown. But the Leader likely does know how to e-mail, if you believe rumors that he asked former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright for her address back in 2000. And your MinorThoughts.com correspondent has also found him registered on Facebook.

One thing's for sure: the ramifications of this newly-unveiled dimension to the dictator's character are enormous. It's much easier to coordinate six-party talks about nukes if everybody can just meet in a chat room.

Economists are turning en masse* to new careers in stand-up comedy.

The most well-known example of this new shift in the job market comes from the work of Yoram Bauman, a PhD. who teaches at the University of Washington to pay the bills when he is not performing shows like this.

But he is far from alone at this point; in fact, your correspondent's brother, a stand-up who will be receiving his own degree in Economics this Spring, recently performed an act at L.A.'s The Ice House.

And that's not all: Since writing his autobiography, speculation has been running high as to what newly-retired Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan will choose to do next. Now, in light of actions taken by his fellow economists and a few comments of his own (for instance, that Hillary Clinton "wouldn't be a bad president"), some* are beginning to wonder if America's Elder Statesman of Finance, who always did look like Woody Allen, is finally listening to the siren call of the mic.

• Meaning "at least two people"._

It used to be that a person had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Now? The government snoops on you through your children. Woe be to the person that does anything the government finds questionable.

I found this out after my 13-year-old daughter's annual checkup. Her pediatrician grilled her about alcohol and drug abuse.

Not my daughter's boozing. Mine.

"The doctor wanted to know how much you and mom drink, and if I think it's too much," my daughter told us afterward, rolling her eyes in that exasperated 13-year-old way. "She asked if you two did drugs, or if there are drugs in the house."

I turned to my wife. "You took her to the doctor. Why didn't you say something?"

She couldn't, she told me, because she knew nothing about it. All these questions were asked in private, without my wife's knowledge or consent.

"The doctor wanted to know how we get along," my daughter continued. Then she paused. "And if, well, Daddy, if you made me feel uncomfortable."

Great. I send my daughter to the pediatrician to find out if she's fit to play lacrosse, and the doctor spends her time trying to find out if her mom and I are drunk, drug-addicted sex criminals.

That's just disturbing, on so many levels. I absolutely hate the idea that the government would automatically consider me to be a danger to my children and would snoop behind my back looking for any evidence to convict me and take them away from me.

It gets worse.

We're not alone, either. Thanks to guidelines issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics and supported by the commonwealth, doctors across Massachusetts are interrogating our kids about mom and dad's "bad" behavior.

The paranoia over parents is so strong that the AAP encourages doctors to ignore "legal barriers and deference to parental involvement" and shake the children down for all the inside information they can get.

And that information doesn't stay with the doctor, either.

Debbie is a mom from Uxbridge who was in the examination room when the pediatrician asked her 5-year-old, "Does Daddy own a gun?"

When the little girl said yes, the doctor began grilling her and her mom about the number and type of guns, how they are stored, etc.

If the incident had ended there, it would have merely been annoying.

But when a friend in law enforcement let Debbie know that her doctor had filed a report with the police about her family's (entirely legal) gun ownership, she got mad.

Ya think? These doctors are state officials are turning lawful actions into near crimes. What gives them the authority to do that?

And people wonder why I have such a strong dislike for doctors. Maybe it's because so many of them think that it's their God-given right to be interfering, know-it-all, tin-pot dictators in charge of making sure society is healthy and pure.

Hardly.

The function of the appendix seems related to the massive amount of bacteria populating the human digestive system, according to the study in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. There are more bacteria than human cells in the typical body. Most of it is good and helps digest food.

But sometimes the flora of bacteria in the intestines die or are purged. Diseases such as cholera or amoebic dysentery would clear the gut of useful bacteria. The appendix's job is to reboot the digestive system in that case.

The appendix "acts as a good safe house for bacteria," said Duke surgery professor Bill Parker, a study co-author. Its location -- just below the normal one-way flow of food and germs in the large intestine in a sort of gut cul-de-sac -- helps support the theory, he said.

Also, the worm-shaped organ outgrowth acts like a bacteria factory, cultivating the good germs, Parker said.

That use is not needed in a modern industrialized society, Parker said. If a person's gut flora dies, they can usually repopulate it easily with germs they pick up from other people, he said. But before dense populations in modern times and during epidemics of cholera that affected a whole region, it wasn't as easy to grow back that bacteria and the appendix came in handy.

In less developed countries, where the appendix may be still useful, the rate of appendicitis is lower than in the U.S., other studies have shown, Parker said.

He said the appendix may be another case of an overly hygienic society triggering an overreaction by the body's immune system.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Republican voters are skeptical about the benefits of free trade.

By a nearly two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade is bad for the U.S. economy, a shift in opinion that mirrors Democratic views and suggests trade deals could face high hurdles under a new president.

Six in 10 Republicans in the poll agreed with a statement that free trade has been bad for the U.S. and said they would agree with a Republican candidate who favored tougher regulations to limit foreign imports. That represents a challenge for Republican candidates who generally echo Mr. Bush's calls for continued trade expansion, and reflects a substantial shift in sentiment from eight years ago.

Frank Newport, at USA Today, says that the poll is largely worthless.

This type of question, often used by the pollsters who conduct the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, is both complex and tricky to interpret.

In essence, the question format gives respondents a set of several reasons to support the subject of the question (in this instance foreign trade) and several reasons to oppose the subject of the question. The respondent is then asked to indicate which set of reasons is most convincing to them.

Thus, the pro and con arguments read as part of the question become very important. In other words, when the topic is something relatively arcane, many respondents listen to the cues presented as the interviewer reads the question and then give their answer based on what seems to resonate most "on the spot". Or - if the respondent is not listening carefully - responses are based on which fragments or phrases sound most appealing.

The Nation Association of Manufacturers does see some cause for concern.

What's happening? The Lou Dobbs effect? The media's incessant hyping of contaminated food and other imports? Just more of the anti-foreign bias as detailed by George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan* in his new book, "The Myth of the Rational Voter?" Or are the advocates of free-trade not working hard enough?

Yes.

We advocates simply have to work harder in making the case for trade in terms that the public can appreciate, connecting good-paying jobs to trade. And not let the anti-trade rhetoric stand unchallenged. Because protectionism makes us poor.

Meanwhile, if voters are potentially misunderstanding the issue, at least the candidates themselves are getting better advice. Here is Barack Obama's economic adviser on free trade.

"Globalization" means free trade and various deregulations that supposedly put downward pressure on American wages because of imports from low-wage countries. Goolsbee, however, says globalization is responsible for "a small fraction" of today's income disparities. He says "60 to 70 percent of the economy faces virtually no international competition." America's 18.5 million government employees have little to fear from free trade; neither do auto mechanics, dentists and many others.

Goolsbee's rough estimate is that technology -- meaning all that the phrase "information economy" denotes -- accounts for more than 80 percent of the increase in earnings disparities, whereas trade accounts for much less than 20 percent. This is something congressional Democrats need to hear from a Democratic economist as they resist trade agreements with South Korea and such minor economic powers as Peru, Panama and Colombia.

So -- stay in school, get an education, become rich. What's not to like? (Oh, and keep both goods and people flowing freely over the border.)

Greg Mankiw hosted a brief back-and-forth about the State Children's Health Insurance Program and how it will be renewed. First, the President's position.

1. We think the "C" in SCHIP stands for "children". Over the past several years, adults have been added to SCHIP. Some were parents of kids with health insurance, others were adults without children. We were responsible for some of those additions, as we approved State waiver requests. We made a policy shift this year, based in part on further input from the Congress, and we're now returning SCHIP to its original purpose. Over the next few years, our policy will return SCHIP to a kids-only program. States that are now covering adults will have to move them onto Medicaid or a State program. While the advocates for HR 976 argue they share this goal, the bill doesn't match the rhetoric - it lets adults in some states back into SCHIP. And in six States (IL, NJ, MI, RI, NM, and MN), more than half of their projected SCHIP expenditures this year are for adults. We think this is the wrong direction for a program that should be about children.

2. We think SCHIP should be about helping poor kids. This bill also raises taxes to subsidize health insurance for some middle-income kids. New York wants to use Federal dollars to cover kids who are clearly not poor: for a family of four, they would like to use Federal tax dollars to pay 65% of health insurance costs for a family of four with income as high as $82,600. (We measure this in terms of a multiple of the "poverty line" - NY wants to cover kids up to "400% of poverty".)

Next up, the Democrats position.

(1) The President supports a proposal that would reduce annual spending on SCHIP relative to inflation and reduce the number of covered children and pregnant women by 840,000 according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

You might ask how the $5 billion increase in spending over 5 years promised by the White House could result in more uninsured. The answer is that for technical reasons the CBO baseline assumes $5 billion in nominal dollars annually going forward, something depicted in the flat green line in your previous post. But spending at this baseline would fall relative to general price inflation and plummet relative to health spending growth. As a result, under CBO's baseline the number of people covered would fall from 7.4 million in 2006 to 3.5 million in 2017, despite an increase in the eligible population.

He says that like it's a bad thing. Unless you assume that the government should be the great health fairy in the sky guaranteeing a doctor in every pot and a nurse in every garage. Or something like that.

To be fair, the response does end this way:

You believe in a smaller government. But in this case there's no free lunch. The White House veto will deliver a smaller government but at the cost of a reduction in the number of currently eligible low-income children covered by SCHIP and an increase in the number of uninsured. You might have better ideas about to reduce the number of uninsured children. But I have a hard time seeing how a Presidential veto could be one of them.

I do have ideas. (One day I'll even write about them.) But part of reforming a system involves avoiding the urge to break it even more than it's already broken. I fear the new SCHIP bill would make it much harder to scale back government involvement later. And that's how a Presidential veto of a bad idea could be one of the ways to reduce the number of uninsured children.

Anyway, if you haven't understanding the back and forth blather (or just haven't cared), this is a good overview of both positions.