Minor Thoughts from me to you

Walt Harrington's reflections on how George W. Bush grew over the years that Harrington knew him. As many people have pointed out, President Bush was far smarter than people thought. (That doesn't mean that he was always right, just that he wasn't an idiot.)

And he began to talk—and talk and talk for what must have been nearly three hours. I’ve never told anyone the specifics of what he said that night, not even my wife or closest friends. I did not make notes later and have only my memory. In the journalism world, off the record is off the record. But I have repeatedly described the hours as “amazing,” “remarkable,” “stunning.”

President Bush—and he was, no doubt, by then a real president—talked expansively about Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, China, Korea, Russia. He talked about his reelection strategies, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, WMD and how he still believed they would be found, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Vladimir Putin. He talked about his aides and how tough their lives were, the long hours and stress and time away from their families, about how difficult it was for his daughters. He said that compared with everyone around a president, the president had the easiest job. He was the same confident, brash man I had met years ago, but I no longer sensed any hint of the old anger or the need for self-aggrandizement.

As he talked, I even thought about an old Saturday Night Live skit in which an amiable, bumbling President Ronald Reagan, played by Phil Hartman, goes behind closed doors to suddenly become a masterful operator in total charge at the White House. The transformation in Bush was that stunning to me.

On the other hand, I still dislike President Bush's assumption that everyone else should bow and scrape before powerful men.

As it turned out, I did see George W. soon again after the encounter on his father’s Cigarette boat. After my story ran in The Washington Post Magazine, the vice president invited my family over to lunch and horseshoes at his official residence, on the grounds of the U. S. Naval Observatory. The vice president had actually called twice to invite us over, but on both occasions, our schedules hadn’t meshed. After the second invite, George W. called my house.

“Walt, my dad is vice president of the United States,” I remember him saying with a touch of irritation. “When he calls and invites you to lunch, you come to lunch.”

∞

Taking old World War II photos, Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov carefully photoshops them over more recent shots to make the past come alive. Not only do we get to experience places like Berlin, Prague, and Vienna in ways we could have never imagined, more importantly, we are able to appreciate our shared history in a whole new and unbelievably meaningful way.

Really, really cool.

∞

I think that unions are a good solution for a problem that no longer exists. One hundred years ago, many jobs were for factory work or mine work. The skill and quality of the individual employee didn't matter. A person would spend an entire day tending a loom, welding rivets, or doing some other mindless, repetitive job.

If one person quit (or died), someone else could easily step in and take over the job without noticeably slowing production. Workers were largely powerless because management could easily replace individual employees. This left each, individual, employee with almost no leverage. The only way that a threat to stop working meant anything is if every employee made the threat simultaneously. Even that threat was largely meaningless unless an employer could be prevented from just bringing in replacement workers en-masse.

In this kind of environment, a union made a lot of sense. It gave largely indistinguishable workers a way to band together and make management take notice of them. It gave them bargaining power, to fight for safer working conditions and better treatment. It gave them the leverage to end abusive practices like the company store.

During this period, workers were like cogs in a vast, industrial machine. Individually, they were interchangeable, easily replaceable, and mostly ignored. Ultimately, the factory machines (or the mine itself) were far more important or valuable than the individual worker was. But together, they had a voice and could force management to pay attention to them. In this environment, unions were a useful tool.

In a union company, it was important that the job get done. It wasn't really important who did that job. But we no longer live in that environment.

We live in a dynamic economy where factories provide fewer and fewer jobs even as factory output increases. The factory "worker" is changing from interchangeable employees to interchangeable robots. The true factory workers need to have unique, valuable skills. They need to be able to watch the factory floor, constantly looking for problems and creating solutions. The worker is more valuable than the machines he watches over. They can be replaced with a purchase order to the manufacturer. His knowledge and skills can't be replaced so easily.

We live in a dynamic economy where knowledge matters. A lot. A good teacher isn't just a replaceable cog in a machine. He or she knows how to construct a lesson plan, knows how to grade papers fairly, knows the subject matter backwards and forwards, knows how to motivate students, knows how to communicate with parents, and more. A good teacher is valuable and hard to find.

We live in a dynamic economy where the best worker is the one who can learn the most and do more than one task well. We live in a dynamic economy where what you can do today isn't nearly as important as what you'll be able to do tomorrow. We live in a dynamic economy where individual creativity and initiative far outweigh the ability to follow rote orders or do the exact same thing day after day, year after year.

In a modern company, it's still important that the job get done. But it's far more important who does the job. The employee's unique knowledge, skills, and input are crucial to the success of the company. The employee is hired to make decisions, to look at a problem, see a solution, and then implement the solution. The employee is hired to work independently and confidently, using his brain as the ultimate tool. This is the environment we live in now.

Unions are ill suited to this environment. Union collective bargaining agreements are written for last century's economy. Union contracts treat employees as replaceable cogs in a machine.

Take, for example, the contract for Madison Teachers Incorporated. Pages 10-15 of the 2009-2011 contract lay out the pay scale for teachers. The entire section assumes that one teacher with a given set of qualifications and credentials is just as good as another teacher with the same set of qualifications and credentials.

No allowance is made for differences in the amount of time that teachers put into the job each day. No allowance is made for the enthusiasm or creative thinking that each teacher brings to the job. No allowance is made for, well, anything that makes a good teacher a good teacher. As far as the contract is concerned, you could take away Mr. Smith and replace him with Ms. Jones and absolutely nothing would have changed.

Instead of valuing flexibility, creativity, and employee knowledge, a union values employee longevity. The employee that has been around the longest, that has the most invested in the union, that has the most clout in the union is favored over the younger employee. That holds true even when the older employee is contributing little to the organization and the younger employee is contributing much to the organization. It doesn't matter. When the time comes for layoffs, the younger employee goes and the tenured, long-time employee stays. This, of course, does wonders for the work effort and morale of the younger employees.

Unions also restrict the ability of the employer to reward and retain the most valuable employees. Union contracts reward every employee the same, based on classification. When it comes time for raises, everyone in the unit gets the same raise regardless of their individual value to the organization. In any organization there are a few great employees who provide much of the creativity and drive. There are a lot of good employees who do their jobs well. And there are always a few bad employees who either don't do their job well or who can't be relied upon to make good decisions and execute tasks properly.

An organization should have the freedom to reward the top performers appropriately, giving them little reason to leave for greener pastures. And the organization should have the freedom to fire the low performers and seek out new hires who might be able to contribute more. Union contracts forbid this kind of personnel management and leave departments unable to retain their top performers while they're also unable to shed their dead weight.

Worse still, the union contract locks in a specific set of work conditions and job responsibilities. It gives employers very little flexibility to deal with changing conditions and changing needs. Before any change can occur, the employer must first convince the employees that the change is necessary and desirable.

For workers who are used to working a specific way (and have grown comfortable in that), that's a very tough sell. If large changes are needed, it can be practically impossible to convince the employees to change. The employer is stuck with a workforce that won't adapt to new needs and that it can't replace. That's a recipe for stagnation and, eventually, death.

Unions are, quite understandably, opposed to any changes that might lead to the elimination of any jobs. Unions exist to protect workers and to ensure that no jobs are ever destroyed. Unions can (and do!) prevent employers from switching to more efficient processes and more efficient technology.

The union mindset would ensure that every car still came with a buggy whip holder and a buggy whip. Sure, they're useless. But the alternative would mean that buggy whip makers would be unemployed and a union wouldn't be able to allow that. Don't believe me? Then why did railroads pay "firemen" to ride in the cab of diesel locomotives, 50 years after diesel engines replaced coal engines?

No, unions are ill suited to the modern work environment. Where the economy requires flexibility, unions offer rigidity. Where the economy requires creativity, unions offer only cog-like employees. Where the economy values unique skills and contributions, the union values longevity.

An organization full of union employees is an organization that is quickly headed for the trash heap of history.

A Journey: My Political Life by Tony Blair

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book caught my eye because I knew very little about Tony Blair. I knew he was the Prime Minister in Britain. I knew he was the leader of the Labour Party and a big government, big spending progressive. I knew he was President Bush’s staunchest ally in the war on terror. And, that’s about it. I really didn’t know anything about what he actually tried to accomplish in Britain or why. I didn’t know anything about who he was or what he made him tick. And, after reading Decision Points, I was interested in his perspective on the events of the past decade.

Although long, this book was an enjoyable read. Blair writes with a light, conversational style that I really enjoyed reading. It could be a little distracting at times, as he would occasionally take a rabbit trail into the past. It was usually apparent when he did so, but I got confused about the timing of events a few times. That was a minor complaint as the style generally contributed greatly to the tone of the book.

As I read, I discovered that Tony Blair has a wonderful sense of humour. That’s matched with a very contemplative approach to life. For example, he recounted several times how stressed out he would get before a big speech, spending his time constantly writing and rewriting his text. He compared this to President Bush who was amazingly laconic before most speeches and never seemed to worry about the message or the delivery. (Some might say that those contrasting approaches showed up in the quality of speeches that each man gave.)

This book is exactly what it says on the cover: a story about the journey Blair took during his political life. It’s partly a history of the events of the past 30 years and partly a recounting of the decisions and actions that formed Blair’s own evolving outlook on life and politics. After reading the book, I came away thoroughly convinced that I would like Tony Blair as a person, even if I felt compelled to oppose many of his policies.

As to policies, I won’t spend a whole lot of time critiquing them. Blair and I are on different ends of the political spectrum, when it comes to the question of how involved and active government should be. It’s not really worth belabouring the point of all of the different ways in which we do disagree.

I was greatly impressed by Blair’s perception of the ways in which traditional big government liberalism and socialism is highly unsuited to our modern economic system and dynamic society. Blair clearly saw what was wrong with the Labour Party and with the government’s highly centralised approach to decision making. He saw that people were used to choice and used to firing incompetent providers in the private section. And he saw that the government’s provision of services wasn’t coming close to what people now expected. As a result, he spent his entire political career trying to reform the delivery and provision of government services. While I don’t agree with his solutions, I was very happy with his overall critiques of government services.

This comes across clearly in his definition of what it means to be a progressive.

First, what makes you a progressive? I would say: belief in social justice, i.e. using the power of society as a whole to bring opportunity, prosperity and hope to those without it; to do so not just within our national boundaries but outside of them; to judge our societies by the condition of the weak as much as the strong; to stand up at all times for the principle that all human beings are of equal worth, irrespective of race, religion, gender (I would add of sexuality) or ability; and never to forget and always to strive for those at the bottom, the poorest, the most disadvantaged, the ones others forget. Notice these are all values, not policies. They may beget policies.

… Third, there is a new divide in politics which transcends traditional left and right. It is what I call “open vs. closed.” Some right-wingers are free-traders, others aren’t. Likewise with the left. On both sides, some are pro-immigration, others anti-. Some favour an interventionist foreign policy; others don’t. Some see globalisation and the emergence of China, India and others as a threat; some as an opportunity. There is a common link to the free trade, pro-immigration (controlled, of course) interventionist and pro-globalisation political positions, but it is “open vs. closed,” not “left vs. right.” I believe progressives should be the champions of the open position, which is not only correct but also a winning position, as Bill Clinton showed conclusively. However, it is a huge and important dividing line in modern politics.

I would agree with this definition and, by it, I think I could call myself a progressive. I would place myself on the “open” side of his dividing line. I think Blair and I would merely (merely!) disagree on the policies that this definition begat.

I very much enjoyed this book as a look into the mind and growth of Tony Blair. It did exactly what a good political memoir should: it helped me to understand who he is, why he made the decisions he did, and how he grew as a result of his time in politics. Now that I’ve read it, I’m strongly rooting for him to have success in the Middle East peace process and I wish him well in his post prime ministerial career.

Richard Hannon, an executive for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, wrote an opinion editorial for the Wall Street Journal yesterday. In How Medicare Killed the Family Doctor he talked about how Medicare's costs exploded between 1965 (when it was created) and 1990. In 1966, the Medicare budget was a mere $3 billion. At that time, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the budget would grow to only $12 billion by 1990. Instead, it was $107 billion by 1990.

To fix the cost problem, Medicare in 1992 began using the "resource based relative value system" (RBRVS), a way of evaluating doctors based on factors such as education, effort and specialized training. But the system didn't consider factors such as outcomes, quality of service, severity or demand.

Today most insurance companies use the Medicare RBRVS because it is perceived as objective. As a result of RBRVS, specialists--especially those who perform a lot of procedures--do extremely well. Primary-care doctors do not.

In short, this is one of the major problems of a third-party payment system. Doctors aren't evaluated and paid by patients based on how good they are, how popular they are, or how effective they are. Instead, someone other than the patient judges a doctor's value and pays him according to a strict pay scale. Doctors have little to no ability to raise or lower prices or to set one price for a bundle of services.

This third party payment system sharply limits the way doctors can compete for patients or appeal to patients for business. It also sharply limits the ability of the patient to reward the doctor for good service or punish the doctor for poor service. When that kind of feedback is eliminated, is it any wonder that we spend more time waiting in clinic waiting rooms than we do actually seeing the doctor? Or that the doctor can often seem more interested in hustling us out the door instead of listening to our medical history?

Our doctors do not work for us, they work for the insurance companies. And that's a big problem with third-party payment for medical care.

Obamacare delenda est

I was wrong last night. I was attempting to argue a point about stimulus spending and whether or not government spending actually helped an economic recovery. To offer some support for my position, I tried to relay from memory a point that David Henderson made over at EconLog. To wit, Keynesian economists predicted that the end of government spending after World War 2 would precipitate a massive rise in unemployment and a return of recession.

David Henderson quoted Paul Samuelson's prediction, from before the war ended.

When this war comes to an end, more than one out of every two workers will depend directly or indirectly upon military orders. We shall have some 10 million service men to throw on the labor market. [DRH comment: he nailed that number.] We shall have to face a difficult reconversion period during which current goods cannot be produced and layoffs may be great. Nor will the technical necessity for reconversion necessarily generate much investment outlay in the critical period under discussion whatever its later potentialities. The final conclusion to be drawn from our experience at the end of the last war is inescapable--were the war to end suddenly within the next 6 months, were we again planning to wind up our war effort in the greatest haste, to demobilize our armed forces, to liquidate price controls, to shift from astronomical deficits to even the large deficits of the thirties--then there would be ushered in the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced. [italics in original]

Samuelson predicted that the government would act to avoid this catastrophe by slowly ramping down spending and acting to increase public employment.

For there is every reason to believe that we shall not be lulled into a feeling of false security by the last war's experience or by the half-truth that the end of the war will witness a boom. No doubt, we shall retain direct controls for a period after the conflict ends. We shall taper off war production gradually. We shall undertake income maintenance in the form of dismissal pay for soldiers, unemployment compensation, direct and work relief expenditure. It is probable, although less certain, that, in addition, the Federal government will initiate employment maintenance measures such as large scale public works, etc. But even these will not be adequate to maintain full employment or any approach to it.

Here's what Henderson said actually happened:

This reinforces the lesson from the far more extreme U.S. experience after World War II: Between FY 1945 and FY 1947, federal government spending was cut by 61 percent. This was a 27-percentage-point drop from 41.9 percent of GDP to 14.7 percent of GDP. Yet the unemployment rate over that same time rose from 1.9 percent to only 3.6 percent. The postwar bust that so many Keynesians expected to happen never did.

History shows that it's possible for government to sharply slash spending without sending the economy into a tailspin. So far, so good. This I remembered last night. Then I tried to remember what David Henderson said about the GI Bill. What I remembered reading was that comparatively few people took advantage of the GI Bill and that it didn't have a huge effect on the company. What Henderson actually said was that comparatively few people took advantage of it in any one year.

Of course, direct controls were removed relatively quickly, certainly within a year and a half of the end of the war. War production did not taper off gradually but plunged. I don't think there was any dismissal pay for soldiers. You could see the GI Bill as a form of relief expenditure, but if I recall correctly, at any given time only about 500,000 people were taking advantage of the GI Bill to get education. [italics mine]

Oops. As I learned last night, 7.8 million veterans eventually took advantage of the G.I. Bill.

Thanks to the GI Bill, millions who would have flooded the job market instead opted for education. In the peak year of 1947, veterans accounted for 49 percent of college admissions. By the time the original GI Bill ended on July 25, 1956, 7.8 million of 16 million World War II veterans had participated in an education or training program.

Now I'm intrigued by the qualification "education or training program". If we're going to count the G.I. Bill as stimulus, I think it makes a difference whether someone went to an actual 2-4 degree program or whether they just went to a training program and then entered the workforce.

Is David Henderson right? Were only about 500,000 people at a time taking advantage of the G.I. Bill? I don't know. I've been having a hard time tracking down the number of students enrolled in college during the 1940's. According to a 1947 Census report, 62.2% of the 6-24 year old population was enrolled in school. Of the 18-29 year old cohort actually enrolled in school, 75.1% of them were veterans. But I'm having a hard time tracking down the actual absolute number of people enrolled in school.

Answers.com has an estimate, but I'm not sure where it's sourced.

Initial expectations for the number of veterans who would utilize the educational benefits offered by the G.I. Bill were quite inaccurate. Projections of a total of several hundred thousand veterans were revised, as more than 1 million veterans were enrolled in higher education during each of 1946 and 1947, and well over 900,000 during 1948. Veterans represented between 40 and 50 percent of all higher education students during this period.

While the G.I. Bill also had an impact on home sales following the war, its unemployment provisions were little used.

Millions also took advantage of the GI Bill's home loan guaranty. From 1944 to 1952, VA backed nearly 2.4 million home loans for World War II veterans.

While veterans embraced the education and home loan benefits, few collected on one of the bill's most controversial provisions--the unemployment pay. Less than 20 percent of funds set aside for this were used.

Job training and higher education certainly took off after World War II, much of it aided by the jobs bill. But overall government stimulus was negative as government spending was cut sharply and as millions of service men and women returned to the civilian workforce. In contrast to Keynesian predictions, the economy responded with a surge of growth and not another slump into recession.

Did you know that before British and U.S. governments created public schools, parents still placed a high value on education? That children got a better education each passing year? That schools were cheaper? That 95% of teenagers were literate? That teenagers were more literate without public schools than they are now, with them? Truth.

I recently discovered a fascinating article on The Spread of Education Before Compulsion: Britain and America in the Nineteenth Century from the Freeman.

A few, choice, excerpts. First, the experience in Britain.

Contrary to popular belief, the supply of schooling in Britain between 1800 and 1840 was relatively substantial prior to any government intervention, although it depended almost completely on private funds. At this time, moreover, the largest contributors to education revenues were working parents and the second largest was the Church. Of course, there was less education per child than today, just as there was less of everything else, because the national income was so much smaller. I have calculated, nevertheless, that the percentage of the net national income spent on day-schooling of children of all ages in England in 1833 was approximately 1 percent. By 1920, when schooling had become "free" and compulsory by special statute, the proportion had fallen to 0.7 percent.

The evidence also shows that working parents were purchasing increasing amounts of education for their children as their incomes were rising from 1818 onwards, and this, to repeat, at a time before education was "free" and compulsory by statute. Compulsion came in 1880, and state schooling did not become free until 1891.

... It is not surprising that with such evidence of literacy growth of young people, the levels had become even more substantial by 1870. On my calculations for 1880, when national compulsion was enacted, over 95 percent of fifteen-year-olds were literate. This should be compared to the fact that over a century later 40 percent of 21-year-olds in the United Kingdom admit to difficulties with writing and spelling.

Second, the experience in the U.S.

Sheldon Richman quotes data showing that from 1650 to 1795, American male literacy climbed from 60 to 90 percent. Between 1800 and 1840 literacy in the North rose from 75 percent to between 91 and 97 percent. In the South the rate grew from about 55 percent to 81 percent. Richman also quotes evidence indicating that literacy in Massachusetts was 98 percent on the eve of legislated compulsion and is about 91 percent today.

Finally, Carl F. Kaestle observes: "The best generalization possible is that New York, like other American towns of the Revolutionary period, had a high literacy rate relative to other places in the world, and that literacy did not depend primarily upon the schools."

And, the conclusion.

If, on the other hand, the term "universal" is intended more loosely to mean something like, "most," "nearly everybody," or "over 90 percent," then we lack firm evidence to show that education was not already universal prior to intervention. The eventual establishment, meanwhile, of laws to provide a schooling that was both compulsory and free, was accompanied by major increases in costs. These included not only unprecedented expenses of growing bureaucracy but also the substantial costs of reduced liberty of families eventually caught in a choice-restricted monopoly system serving the interests not of the demanders but of the rent-seeking suppliers. Both sides of the Atlantic, meanwhile, shared this same fate.

We educated our children before we had universal, "free", public schools. We educated our children before the rise of strong national and state teachers' unions. We could have it again.

This is just incredibly cool.

Dr. Prum and his colleagues took advantage of the fact that feathers contain pigment-loaded sacs called melanosomes. In 2009, they demonstrated that melanosomes survived for millions of years in fossil bird feathers. The shape and arrangement of melanosomes help produce the color of feathers, so the scientists were able to get clues about the color of fossil feathers from their melanosomes alone.

[...] Working with paleontologists at the Beijing Museum of Natural History and Peking University, the researchers began to study a 150-million-year-old species called Anchiornis huxleyi. The chicken-sized theropod was festooned with long feathers on its arms and legs.

The researchers removed 29 chips, each the size of a poppy seed, from across the dinosaur’s body. Mr. Vinther put the chips under a microscope and discovered melanosomes.

To figure out the colors of Anchiornis feathers, Mr. Vinther and his colleagues turned to Matthew Shawkey, a University of Akron biologist who has made detailed studies of melanosome patterns in living birds. Dr. Shawkey can accurately predict the color of feathers from melanosomes alone. The scientists used the same method to decipher Anchiornis’s color pattern.

Jon R. Gabel writes in the New York Times today, saying that we shouldn't fear the cost of health care reform because the CBO has a long history of underestimating the savings from reforms.

In the early 1980s, Congress changed the way Medicare paid hospitals so that payments would no longer be based on costs incurred. ... The Congressional Budget Office predicted that, from 1983 to 1986, this change would slow Medicare hospital spending (which had been rising much faster than the rate of inflation) by $10 billion, and that by 1986 total spending would be $60 billion. Actual spending in 1986 was $49 billion. The savings in 1986 alone were as much as three years of estimated savings.

In the 1990s, the biggest change in Medicare came with the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, a compromise between a Republican-controlled Congress and a Democratic administration. ... The actual savings turned out to be 50 percent greater in 1998 and 113 percent greater in 1999 than the budget office forecast.

In the current decade, the major legislative change to the system was the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which added a prescription drug benefit. In assessing how much this new program would cost, the Congressional Budget Office assumed that prices would rise as patients demanded more drugs, and estimated that spending on the drug benefit would be $206 billion.

Actual spending was nearly 40 percent less than that.

I find it interesting though that his savings numbers only extend out a few years. For instance, he talks about how much was saved in 1986, from the 1983 bill, but doesn't talk about hospital spending trends since then. How much has the 1983 bill saved over the past 26 years? He talks about how much money was saved in 1998 and 1999 as a result of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, but he doesn't talk about how much has been saved in the intervening 10 years. Did the trend continue?

Then I saw this graph, of Congressional health care underestimates. (Courtesy of John Goodman, courtesy of the Joint Economic Commitee. You can read the full report.)

It looks like health care costs are underestimated far more than they're overestimated.

Happy Birthday America. Let's remember how it all began.

And here's the best dramatic reading I've seen, of the entire Declaration of Independence.

Earlier today, the American Academy of Physician Assistants issued an urgent Action Alert:

In a speech before the American Medical Association today, President Obama once again restated his commitment to building America's primary care workforce of "physicians and nurse practitioners" - omitting PAs from the discussion.

Please contact President Obama today. Let him know that PAs are listening- and that we are gravely concerned that we're not hearing a similar commitment to physician assistants.

PAs are the future of health care, and must make their voices heard. Contact the President today with a special message: PAs are a Critical Part of Health Care Reform.

I knew about it because a friend -- who's studying to become a PA -- emailed me and asked me to contact President Obama. She asked me to emphasize how important it was that PA's be part of the solution. Here was my response.

I can't do that. I disagree with the entire premise of healthcare "reform". The AAPA and Congress are both operating on a flawed assumption: the idea that it's even possible to create a plan that works for all Americans. It's not.

No one person, or group of people -- no matter how smart -- has the ability to create a health plan that meets the needs of 300 million unique individuals. No one group has enough information to make good decisions for everyone. Every patient has different needs, different backgrounds, different abilities, different family structure, different reactions, and different prejudices. I know you've seen this in your experiences in healthcare.

Through family, through friends, through my wife and through my job, I've heard a lot of stories about healthcare. One thing I've learned is that doctors (and PA's) have trouble coming up with a treatment plan that works for one patient. Often, the patient and the doctor have to work together over a period of time to figure out what works best for the specific condition and patient. How much harder -- how much more impossible -- is it to define a plan that works for everyone?

The necessary knowledge doesn't exist in one database, one field, one speciality. It's dispersed through many different people, each holding incomplete and sometimes seemingly contradictory information. I'm not just talking about medical information either. Each patient has a different willingness to undergo treatments, a different tolerance for discomfort, and a different preference for how long to continue treatment. How can one committee, how can one plan, possibly work for all people?

The answer is not to centralize decision making in Washington, D.C. or even in Madison, WI and Albany, NY. The answer is to give each patient, each doctor, each PA, the full freedom they need to reach the decisions that work best in the individual circumstances.

In the end, it's the patient that must be free to make all of the required decisions. Doctors, nurses, PAs, and healthcare organizations ultimately listen to whoever is paying the bills. Right now, that's Medicare, Medicaid, and the insurance companies. As a result, healthcare professionals are far more responsive to the desires of big government and big insurance -- not to patients. The solution is to return control to the patients -- not to take it further away from them.

Here's an interesting statistic (page 417): in 1960, 55 cents of every dollar of health care was out-of-pocket. In 2003, it was down to 16 cents. Today, the rest is paid through taxes and insurance premiums. And all of that insurance hasn't saved anybody any money. Healthcare costs today are 80% higher than they were in 1960. Put a different way, patients are only paying 16% of the costs out of pocket but the total costs have skyrocketed. That hasn't exactly turned out to be a great deal.

I feel very strongly that we'd be much better off if we started paying for healthcare the same way we did in the 1960s. If patients pay more out of pocket at the place of service, they'll ultimately get higher quality care. Overall costs will drop (through increased price transparency and competition) and patients will save money in the end.

And, yes, there will always be people who's injuries and illnesses exceed their financial resources. But they would be better served through block grants than through government plans, payments, and rationing. If they need financial assistance, give them extra finances. But allow them to control how, when, and where they're treated.

That's healthcare reform that will truly change things. Trying to create a nationwide plan by getting all of the special interests involved will just result in more of the same failed healthcare policies that we've seen over the last 20 years.

The Wall Street Journal recently provided a history lesson about a Democrat President and his promises of tax cuts:

Mr. McCain could do worse than remind the middle class what happened to them the last time a charismatic Democratic candidate promised them a tax cut. While he's at it, he might also remind them how much more expensive it will be to send Barack Obama to the White House at a time when his fellow Democrats will have a majority in both houses of Congress.

The Clinton years hold some good lessons on both these scores. Back when Mr. Clinton was campaigning for president in 1992, he made a pretty direct pitch: Raise taxes on people making more than $200,000, and use those revenues to fund tax relief for the "forgotten middle class."

In an October presidential debate, then-Gov. Clinton laid out the marginal-rate increase he wanted and some of his plans for the revenue that would be brought in. He followed with a pledge:

"Now, I'll tell you this," he said. "I will not raise taxes on the middle class to pay for these programs. If the money does not come in there to pay for these programs, we will cut other government spending, or we will slow down the phase-in of the programs."

Mr. Clinton, of course, won that election. And as the inauguration approached, he began backtracking from his promise. At a Jan. 14, 1993, press conference in New Hampshire, he claimed that it was the media that had played up a middle-class tax cut, not him. A month later, he announced his actual plan before a joint session of Congress.

On page one of the New York Times, the paper described the fate of the middle-class tax cut this way: "Families earning as little as $20,000 a year -- members of the 'forgotten middle class' whose taxes he promised during his campaign to cut -- will also be asked to send more dollars to Washington under the President's plan."

Oops. Can we trust Senator Obama more than we trusted Governor Clinton?

Recently, UCLA confirmed my belief that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of America's worst Presidents. He not only did more than any other politician to create interst group politics, he not only centralized and increased government power to an unprecedented degree, but he prolonged the Great Depression by at least 7 years. That was the conclusion recently reached by UCLA researchers.

After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."

In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.

... In the three years following the implementation of Roosevelt's policies, wages in 11 key industries averaged 25 percent higher than they otherwise would have done, the economists calculate. But unemployment was also 25 percent higher than it should have been, given gains in productivity.

Meanwhile, prices across 19 industries averaged 23 percent above where they should have been, given the state of the economy. With goods and services that much harder for consumers to afford, demand stalled and the gross national product floundered at 27 percent below where it otherwise might have been.

"High wages and high prices in an economic slump run contrary to everything we know about market forces in economic downturns," Ohanian said. "As we've seen in the past several years, salaries and prices fall when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal policies short-circuited the market's self-correcting forces."

The policies were contained in the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which exempted industries from antitrust prosecution if they agreed to enter into collective bargaining agreements that significantly raised wages. Because protection from antitrust prosecution all but ensured higher prices for goods and services, a wide range of industries took the bait, Cole and Ohanian found. By 1934 more than 500 industries, which accounted for nearly 80 percent of private, non-agricultural employment, had entered into the collective bargaining agreements called for under NIRA.

Cole and Ohanian calculate that NIRA and its aftermath account for 60 percent of the weak recovery. Without the policies, they contend that the Depression would have ended in 1936 instead of the year when they believe the slump actually ended: 1943.

NIRA's role in prolonging the Depression has not been more closely scrutinized because the Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional within two years of its passage.

"Historians have assumed that the policies didn't have an impact because they were too short-lived, but the proof is in the pudding," Ohanian said. "We show that they really did artificially inflate wages and prices."

Even after being deemed unconstitutional, Roosevelt's anti-competition policies persisted -- albeit under a different guise, the scholars found. Ohanian and Cole painstakingly documented the extent to which the Roosevelt administration looked the other way as industries once protected by NIRA continued to engage in price-fixing practices for four more years.

The number of antitrust cases brought by the Department of Justice fell from an average of 12.5 cases per year during the 1920s to an average of 6.5 cases per year from 1935 to 1938, the scholars found. Collusion had become so widespread that one Department of Interior official complained of receiving identical bids from a protected industry (steel) on 257 different occasions between mid-1935 and mid-1936. The bids were not only identical but also 50 percent higher than foreign steel prices. Without competition, wholesale prices remained inflated, averaging 14 percent higher than they would have been without the troublesome practices, the UCLA economists calculate.

One of The Economist's recent blog entries reminds me of why I like the magazine as much as I do, notwithstanding its faults. Can you see any mainstream American newspaper making this comparison?

"IMAGINE Nazi rule in Germany surviving for decades, with Hitler undefeated in war and succeeded on his death in the early 1950s by a series of lacklustre party hacks who more or less disowned his “excesses”. Imagine then a “reform Nazi” (call him Michael Gorbach) coming to power in the 1980s and dismantling the National Socialist system, only to fall from power as the Third Reich collapsed in political and economic chaos.

"Imagine a shrunken “German Federation” suffering ten years of upheaval, before an SS officer (call him Voldemar Puschnik) came to power, first as prime minister and then as president. Under eight years of rule by Herr Puschnik, Germany regains economic stability, largely thanks to a sky-high coal price."

Readers who chose to comment on the above description can be broken down into righteously indignant "whataboutisms" from Russians and your typical anti-Westerners, those who angrily noted an even more accurate parallel - Turkey - and a couple of level-headed chaps who simply by virtue of their existence make living in this world much more tolerable.

I've always liked President Calvin Coolidge. This 1924 White House speech was the first ever White House video recording.

How cool is that? And why can't he run for office in 2008?

If you haven't heard yet, the horse-chestnut tree that gave famous Jewish refugee Anne Frank so much comfort in the early 1940's has been condemned by the city. And I don't mean "condemned" in the sense that the U.N. "condemns" things; I mean it's going to be ripped out of the ground. The tree's simply so old now, it's become a hazard to its human neighbors, who understandably take a dim view of a piece of living history crushing their houses.

However, that hasn't stopped it from continuing to comfort somebody; a few people have picked off some of its chestnuts and are now selling them on eBay. The price for your own Anne Frank Chestnut Tree (TM) is, at present, over $30,000 and climbing.

On a personal note, I'll be reading The Diary of Anne Frank for the first time soon. I've just got about a hundred pages of The Brothers Karamazov left before I jump into it.

(Tip o' the hat: FOXNews' site).

5000 years of religion in 90 seconds, that is. This is pretty cool.

How has the geography of religion evolved over the centuries, and where has it sparked wars? Our map gives us a brief history of the world's most well-known religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. Selected periods of inter-religious bloodshed are also highlighted. Want to see 5,000 years of religion in 90 seconds? Ready, Set, Go!

My coverage of several extremely important news stories has prevented me until now from replying to the recent posts of my friend and webmaster Joe - but much like my standing up for terrorists' rights earlier this week, I now find myself wishing I'd acted far more quickly. Perhaps I could have saved Joe some embarrassment.

Embarrassment like this picture.

Or the substantially different but equal embarrassment of my correcting him when he declares, in reaction to news that America's Christian conservatives are considering forming a new party, that

"I’d love to see legitimate competitors to the Democrats and Republicans. Unfortunately, that would take an election cycle or two to fully emerge. Until then, the only thing a new party would do is pull votes away from Republicans and towards Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama... [and] the next election could have big consequences... Right now, I’ll take a candidate who merely promises to appoint originalist justices to the Supreme Court."

Alas.

The problem with Joe and The Anchoress's assertion that lack of conservative unity in '08 will lead to the Socialist States of America is one of perspective. Is saving our freedom important? Well, it's certainly not a non-issue, but it was never the primary focus of the Christian as portrayed in the New Testament. Despite living lives far more imperiled by an oppressive (and foreign) government than today's Americans, the Christ of the Gospels and His followers in Acts never bothered to chase the political freedoms for which so many of their fellow Jews longed. Jesus pointedly refuses to get caught up in an ongoing tax debate (Matthew 22:21). And if compelled (likely by Roman soldiers, many scholars say) to accompany a man one mile, Jesus recommends in Matthew 5:21 the faithful go with him two.

Clearly, Jesus and His early disciples placed far greater importance on social change "from the ground up" - fixing people's souls rather than fixing the system under which the people lived. Small wonder, too, if one considers their ministry within the context of the Bible's other teachings on the nature of Man; after all, when God has made clear that men are not capable of saving themselves, how useful can a government system created and run by men really be? When God has made clear that the war for Man's immortal self is an internal struggle, rather than dependent on external factors, why expend our limited resources in ultimately fruitless endeavors to sustain a safe environment in which to live?

And they are fruitless endeavors. We American Protestants probably need to be reminded of that more than anybody. Although we rarely say so anymore, many of us still vaguely believe the U.S.A. to somehow be a holy land - a God-loving, God-blessed sidekick to Israel. Its divinely-inspired protector. Its big, protective buddy in the cell block.

This is why in Christian fiction about the end of the world, such as the Left Behind series, the U.S. is usually defeated by the Antichrist rather than a party - or Heaven forbid, the vehicle - to his ascension. This is also why the U.S.A., in some form or other, always happens to still exist in Christian fiction during the end of the world; few of us consider the likelihood that much like the Romans, we're likely little more, ultimately, than a particularly bright flash in the pan, and one which will grow progressively dimmer as History marches farther and farther - who knows how far, before Judgment Day? - past our crumbling remains.

Because we think we're special, a nation-state worth preserving in God's sight. But we aren't. And if the concept of the U.S.A. isn't worth preserving, then why do we American Christians (not "Christian Americans", note) spend so much of our God-given time and energy trying to preserve it?

The answer is, I am told: so we can defend the Church.

After all, in the United States the Church is currently free from persecution, and capable of supporting other churches in more dangerous countries because of that. Children may be educated about their LORD Jesus without fear; so may adults. Surely, any reasonable person might claim such a state of affairs is worth saving.

Which is why it's a good thing people like me are around to provide an alternative to reasonable people - because sometimes they're wrong. Such a state of affairs is not worth having, at least not unconditionally, as its proponents basically suggest when they present us the false dilemma of choosing 'twixt two evils. It makes no sense to seek protection of our spiritual kingdom at the cost of our spiritual integrity; it makes no sense to gain even the whole world, if we lose our souls (Mark 8:36).

So what must we as followers of the Christ do? Dr. Dobson himself actually put it very well in a recent (albeit sickeningly fluffy) interview on Townhall.com.

"You start with a moral principle. You have to make your decisions about who’s going to lead you not on the basis of pragmatics—not on the basis of who can win or who’s ahead in the polls or who has the most money or who’s the most popular. You begin by saying what are the irreducible minimums that I believe in, that I care about; what are the biblical values I cannot compromise."

After that, you don't let a bunch of Chicken Littles scare you into budging from those values. Should they suggest that if you don't vote Republican, President Hillary Clinton will steal what meager treasure you have amassed here on Earth, you remind them that the only treasure you consider important waits for you in Heaven. Should they suggest that if you don't vote Republican, Democrats will decide how to run your health care, you remind them that government-run health care is scarcely persecution of the saints. Should they suggest that if you don't vote Republican, pro-abortion judges will sit on the Supreme Court, you remind them that what they are asking you to do is consider voting for a pro-abortion candidate.

Because it ultimately doesn't matter if the very fate of America is indeed at stake in 2008. Jesus doubtlessly knew His own chosen people were to be crushed and scattered by Rome within fifty years of His ministry's end. Even faced with that looming darkness, however, He did not sacrifice the purity and focus of His ministry.

He did not, and you will not, because you both know that whatever the situation today, you will scarcely remember it an eternity from now, when you walk in the fields sprung up from an old world's ashes.

The Ladies Home Journal predicts the future, in 1900. Our "now" was their nearly unimaginable future. Their vision of our present tells us more about them then it does about us, I'm afraid.

Some of the predictions are fairly prescient:

Automobiles will be cheaper than horses are today. Farmers will own automobile hay-wagons, automobile truck-wagons, plows, harrows and hay-rakes. A one-pound motor in one of these vehicles will do the work of a pair of horses or more. Children will ride in automobile sleighs in winter. Automobiles will have been substituted for every horse vehicle now known. There will be, as already exist today, automobile hearses, automobile police patrols, automobile ambulances, automobile street sweepers. The horse in harness will be as scarce, if, indeed, not even scarcer, then as the yoked ox is today.

Others missed the mark by a mile:

There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America and its possessions by the lapse of another century. Nicaragua will ask for admission to our Union after the completion of the great canal. Mexico will be next. Europe, seeking more territory to the south of us, will cause many of the South and Central American republics to be voted into the Union by their own people.

At the time, adding new states was a fairly common occurence. Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska, and Hawaii hadn't yet become states in 1900. So, of course, they thought it reasonable that eventually most of Latin and South America would decide to join the Union.

Check it out. Not only was it fun reading, but it's a warning against getting too smug about our own understanding of the future.

The Declaration of Independence is still one of my favorite political documents. In fact, I have a copy of it hanging in my dining room. The Declaration was signed on the 4th of July, so what better topic to write about on America's birthday? I was planning on writing just such a post yesterday to celebrate the Declaration. Unfortunately, I need to do a lot of preparation before writing the post. That didn't happen. Instead, I'll start the prep now and you can read it next year.

Until then, this excerpt from P. J. O'Rourke is what I would have written if I had the time and I was a lot funnier than I am. Enjoy.