Weekend Music Chill

This song always reminds me of California, despite this band's origins in Florida. They also made the best version of Ghost Riders, which I will post on B-Daddy's Other Blog if I can find it. When I was a teen, I always they these guys were country, but the wiki says they are "southern rock." Go figure.

Don't Give Up On California

At San Diego's Tea Party rally last Saturday, Dawn really jolted me when she said not to give up on California, adding "Remember, this is the Golden State." It made me realize that I had. I figured the state needed to "hit bottom" like a drunk, before it collectively came to its senses. The spread of a vibrant Tea Party movement within the state attests to the truth of what she said.

But how to fix it? Right now the state legislature is unable to cope with a $21 billion budget deficit. It is dominated by Democrats who would rather outlaw cussing or pass a veto-ready universal health insurance scheme, rather than deal with the reality of this crisis. This deficit is 1% of the state's GDP, making it sound small, but the state is already known for having both a high sales tax and a high income tax, so where the hell is the money going?

California Tax Revenue by type, Source Red County, California

My research has shown that overall spending as a percent of personal income has fluctuated up and down for the last decade. Unfortunately, in the good years the legislature spends every nickle of it, saving nothing for a rainy day.

Looking at this graph, things don't LOOK so bad. But notice that spending ramped up from 1997 to 2007 and that despite a recent downturn, we are still way up. Also, these figures are adjusted for inflation. There is no reason to believe that per capita spending, adjusted for inflation should vary from year to year. Here is the scarier unadjusted picture:



But it still doesn't answer where all that swag is going.

But here is a clue:

Approximately 85% of the state's 235,000 employees (not including higher education employees) are unionized. As the governor noted during his $83 billion budget roll-out, over the past decade pension costs for public employees increased 2,000%. State revenues increased only 24% over the same period. A Schwarzenegger adviser wrote in the San Jose Mercury News in the past few days that, "This year alone, $3 billion was diverted to pension costs from other programs." There are now more than 15,000 government retirees statewide who receive pensions that exceed $100,000 a year, according to the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility.

Amazingly, even Willie Brown, seems to agree there is a problem. From the same article:

My hope is that these and other reforms find support in unlikely places. Former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, a well-known liberal voice, recently wrote this in the San Francisco Chronicle: "The deal used to be that civil servants were paid less than private sector workers in exchange for an understanding that they had job security for life. But we politicians—pushed by our friends in labor—gradually expanded pay and benefits . . . while keeping the job protections and layering on incredibly generous retirement packages. . . . [A]t some point, someone is going to have to get honest about the fact."

So what's to be done? Amazingly I found this Deloitte Research Study that had some good ideas. (I usually have a low opinion of consultants.) Here are a few that I like:

• Curtail abuses of policy primarily in pay raises and sick leave that allow inflation of benefits.
• Raise employee contribution requirements. After all these are generous pensions, state employees should contribute, the way I do for my federal pension.
  
• Develop a plan and stick to it. Stop shifting the burden to future generations.
• Put newly hired workers into lower cost programs.
• Limit cost of living raises to actual inflation.
• Scale back generous early retirement programs.

But the one thing they don't say that would give short term relief is: REDUCE THE NUMBER OF STATE EMPLOYEES. (Sorry for shouting).

By shifting work to contractors, who usually have a defined contribution plan and away from the defined benefits plan the state provides, it will immediately start reducing the burden of future pensions on the state. Further, there are many areas where the state could contract for services and save money, because, as Willie Brown points out, state workers are paid above the private sector average.

These are things that could be done without cutting state "services." Cutting actual programs is a blog for another day. But I just want to point out one quick win. About 25% of the state budget is for "health and human services," much of which is for welfare. From the Fox & Hounds blog:

In 1996, Congress took much-needed action to reform the federal welfare program. The reforms tore down the old federal entitlement program and empowered states to implement genuine welfare-to-work programs. Caseloads across the country, including California’s, began to decline.

But we didn’t go far enough. While other states tightened their time limits and sanctions, California’s program remained lax, with extended time limits and weak sanction policies. The direct consequence of the state’s failure to clean up the system is the disproportionately high welfare rate we face today.

And we’ve tolerated these bloated welfare rolls despite the fact that most CalWORKs recipients aren’t following the rules. The law requires welfare recipients to meet a minimum level of work participation, but only 22 percent of work-eligible welfare recipients in California actually do so. Incredibly, of California recipients required to work in 2007, 64 percent didn’t work at all—not a single hour. This must change.

My link to that article is not an endorsement of Steve Poizner for Governor. I am still sorting out my options.

Summary of my overly long blog post. Fix spending by reforming pensions, reducing the number of state workers and running our welfare system like the rest of the country.

More Lies from Obama on Health Care Insurance Alleged Reform

As expected, Obama called for abusing Senate rules and passing Health Care through reconciliation even though he earlier said that was a bad idea. Reconciliation is intended for purely budgetary matters, a point now conveniently ignored both by Obama and in the WaPo article quoted below. Just one more promise broken by The One. Time for Senate Republicans to go all out to stop this travesty. Others will dissect his speech elsewhere, I wanted to focus on some obvious lies from the WaPo article:

Declaring that "it's time to give the American people more control over their own health insurance," he said his proposal represents "an approach that has been debated and changed and, I believe, improved over the last year." He said it "incorporates the best ideas from Democrats and Republicans," including some that GOP participants offered during last week's "health-care summit," such as funding state grants on medical malpractice reform and curbing waste, fraud and abuse in the health-care system.

Of course, the proposal does exactly the opposite of give people more control over their health insurance, by imposing new regulations, requiring people to buy specified coverage and coercing a one-size fits all approach, his proposals do the exact opposite.

The best ideas from Democrats and Republicans? This bill incorporates only the suckiest ideas of Dems and pays lip service to a couple Republican ideas and fully ignores the bulk of their ideas. And what's this crap about ending waste, fraud and abuse? You have the full legal tools at your disposal to do that NOW, Mr. President. Get your AG off the stupidity of civilian trials for terrorists and get moving on something that will save us all some coin.

From CATO's Facebook page: (H/T WC Varones)

Dropping a few Republican ideas into a government takeover of health care is like sterilizing the needle before a lethal injection: a nice thought, but the ultimate outcome is the same.

Reconciliation is often called the nuclear option. Republicans need to credibly retaliate. MAD worked to tame the Commies in a bygone era, maybe it will work again.

TARP Losses ONLY $117 Billion

According to the Treasury Department spokesman, Andrew Williams, projected losses for the Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP) are only going to be $117 billion not the $341 billion earlier projected. What a relief. When this program was first debated, and tea party types objected, we were told this isn't government spending, it's just a loan; it won't add to the national debt; it will all get paid back. Right. It galls me that the so called elites don't think the average person can understand the workings of finance and financial regulation. (Meanwhile Fannie and Freddie unlimited bailout cash doesn't even make the TARP books, so even this figure is an underestimated lie.) Screw ups like TARP are predictable by everyone except these elites. And to remind every Republican running for office, this donkey of a program was initiated with Republican votes under a Republican administration. If you jackasses want any Tea Party votes, you better start doing some serious work in cutting spending.

Not supporting Jim Bunning isn't such a good start either. Get with the program, I know you can't shut down everything, but one Senator showed some principle in demanding some offsets to deficit expanding extension of unemployment benefits. No matter how popular the programs being halted, unless the Republicans can show some fortitude on deficit reduction, they aren't really catching the mood of the country. Bravo to Scott Brown for applauding Bunning's stand. I know Bunning has issues, but the leadership in the Senate should have gotten their caucus together and made a principled stand on the long avoided promise that all programs will be offset to ensure they don't increase the deficit.

Freedom Coalition Agenda 2010

I am revising the Freedom Coalition Agenda for 2010. Most of the positions haven't changed, but I am changing the order to reflect the concerns of the Tea Party Movement. One of the reasons I started this blog was to advance an agenda that would further the cause of freedom. In my experience, being right on the issues isn't enough, one's coalition must pick issues that are winners and that capture the public imagination.

The Republican party was founded as the party of freedom, but by 2006 they were identified as the party of big government. I therefor propose this Freedom Coalition agenda to get the party back on track. I hope the Republicans adopt a true freedom agenda, if they don't, they won't get my vote. As with any agenda, this will change with circumstances and I will update it periodically.

FREEDOM COALITION AGENDA 2010

• Defeat Government Take Over of Health Care. This is our signature issue today. We must defeat the current Democrat/Socialist plan, but we also have a plan of our own. We have shamelessly taken much of John Mackey's program and adopted it as our own. (Paul Ryan (R-WI) has also adopted elements of this plan.)
  

1. "Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts." Patients who have skin in the game and market knowledge will reduce costs faster than any government program.
   
2. "Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits."
   
3. Allow competition across state lines.
   
4. "Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover."
   
5. "Enact tort reform."
6. "Make costs transparent."
   
7. "Enact medicare reform." Medicare policies that are mimicked by the private sector are strangling the medical profession.
   
8. Revise tax law to make it easier to donate to those without insurance.

• Smaller Government and Reform. These issues go hand in glove. The public loathes the sight of big business getting handout in the form of bailouts, subsidies and tax code preferences. They see the Congress get loads of campaign contributions and rightly conclude that the money is buying access that tilts the playing field, at best; or is buying Congressman at worst. Smaller government means less goodies to hand out. A reform agenda to end earmarks, end subsidies (even for ethanol) and simplify the tax code removes the incentives for business to try to buy the votes of the Congress. I can't find the original quote, but I remember Steve Forbes saying, "If you have a vermin problem in your kitchen, you can set traps and board up holes, but sooner or later your going to have to remove the cake from under the sink."

• Stop Spending to Reduce the Deficit. This is simple economics, with government sucking up all of the present and future resources of the country, it is a beast that sucks the life blood of credit, resources and talent from the businesses, large and small, that are the economic engine of this country. Interest on the national debt in fiscal year 2009 was $383 billion, 2010 is on track to hit $492 billion. If interest rates go up even slightly, interest payments on the debt will be in the trillions per year. Alternatively, we will get inflation that will make the 70's look mild.
  

• Reform Financial Regulation. The last recession wasn't caused by free market excess, but by too much government. Banks and insurers concluded they were too big to fail (TBTF) and called government's bluff. Many of them should have been allowed to fail. Further, as the big banks increase their market share, we demand that they carry higher percentage reserves, so that they won' fail. We call for an end to taxpayer subsidized speculation in the financial sector. We demand transparency in all things financial, including the pricing of assets. We call for an end to political interference that turned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into political vehicles to turn loans into votes. We call for an end to speculation with taxpayer insured deposits. We call on the Federal Reserve to open its books for inspection by the Congress that created it as well as the American people.

• Champion Freedom of Speech. We oppose campaign finance reform that protects incumbents and vested interests. Ultimately, these laws abridge free speech. There are so many examples of small groups harassed by monied opponents when they seek to organize to protect their rights. In Colorado, some neighbors who didn't want to be annexed by another city held some bakes sales to raise money for signs and ended being fined thousands of dollars. See Sampson v. Coffman. We also oppose campus speech codes that are intended to silence any point of view except the prevailing leftist orthodoxy. See FIRE article. This issue is a winner because Americans have long rejected the claim that others can tell us how to think and what we can say, especially when it comes to politics. Although they aren't happy about money in politics, it is easy to demonstrate that opposition to free speech isn't the answer. More on the right answer below.

• Oppose Eminent Domain abuse. Originally, the concept of eminent domain was meant to prevent individual property owners from holding the government hostage when building a road or other public good. Over time, this right of government morphed into the power to seize your land at the behest of the powerful for any reason, however flimsy. This view was challenged in Kelo vs. New London, but our side lost on a 5-4 decision, one of the most unjust outcomes since Dred Scott vs. Sandford. Fortunately, the appalling sight of the powerful and well connected preying on small business owners and individuals is fueling a backlash. But eminent domain abuse continues and this remains a powerful issue for our side. Here is an example of a hard fought victory n Long Branch, NJ, where officials want to replace middle class households with upper class ones. Frequently, the victims of this abuse are poor minorities. In this case a victorious homeowner was also presented an award from the NAACP. This is real outreach on issues that affect minorities that would benefit the GOP.

• Support School Choice. We could continue this outreach by taking on the school choice issue at full tilt. I previously blogged where the Arizona school teachers union wants to take away the ability of special needs kids to get much needed educational help through a voucher program. I think the Democrats are VERY vulnerable on this issue. School choice is the real civil rights issue of our day. Bad schools are wrecking the chances of poor and predominately minority students of being successful in college. Even the liberal University of California agrees with me that minorities are educationally disadvantaged. Interestingly, even though the academic literature on the benefits of choice are somewhat mixed, it seems to be that the greatest beneficiaries of school choice seem to be the urban poor. Further, as we experiment with choice we will find the combination of programs and incentives that really work.

• Support Freedom Abroad. Newly liberated peoples the world over have shown a propensity to embrace freedom and markets when the yoke of tyranny has been lifted. The policy of America should be to actively work against dictatorship in all its forms (Islamic, Socialist, Fascist and Communist). We should seek to advance the cause of freedom, not through force of arms, but through steady pressure. Every piece of foreign policy should be weighed against this end. Further, we are also ready to use force of arms in this cause when defense of our national interest requires it. Americans resonate with the concepts of helping to liberate peoples from tyranny, this is a winner. We especially decry the pathetic kow-towing to dictatorship in our own hemisphere in the shameful treatment of Honduras by the Obama administration.
  

• Oppose Partial-Birth Abortions. Because the practice is as odious and repugnant as the name suggests. Americans can viscerally understand this issue. How can it be legal to kill a baby 8 months into a pregnancy when that same child if delivered, would be afforded full protection of the law? It is illogical, and even though I am a Christian and hold all human life sacred, I don't have to rest my case on theological arguments. One need only talk to an abortion survivor to understand the horror of this procedure. I blogged about the politics of this issue here.

So that's my proposal. Short, but I hope substantive. I welcome your comments, disagreements, additions and satire.

B-Daddy

Tea Party Saturday Video Montage

Waynok put together a montage of our whole Tea Party trip. Hope you enjoy.

Pelosi, Tea Parties and Financial Reform

I am sure that most of my readers have seen the HotAir column linking to the video where Pelosi alternately trashes the Tea Partiers as "astroturfing Republican hijackers" and then claims to have something in common with them:

But, you know, we share some of the views of the Tea Partiers in terms of the role of special interest in Washington, D.C., as — it just has to stop.

So Democrats are somehow above taking money and cutting deals with special interests? This is her claim? My rebuttal, Take Geithner . . . please! He is but one of many Democrats with ties to special interests that are in positions of authority with regards to financial regulation.

At least 25 senior Obama administration officials previously held executive or board-of-director posts with some of the globe’s biggest financial houses, according to a new analysis for Portfolio.com by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), a campaign-finance watchdog group. (To see a full list of the officials with previous jobs on Wall Street, click here.)

Now the Bush administration was not better, and neither were any previous administrations. I'm not sure that you can adequately populate government staff without individuals knowledgeable about the industry. However, this often leads to a condition known as regulatory capture, where the regulators appear to be regulating for the benefit of the industry, not the general public. To some extent this process is inevitable, see Public Choice theory. Now this doesn't excuse Pelosi for her continued mendacity and slander against our movement, but it points out the complexity of the situation.

So how can we bring about financial reform? Much of what we are protesting in the Tea Party is the close ties between Big Business, especially Wall Street and Big Government the end result of which is taxpayer bailouts of risky behavior. The end result is the exact opposite of justice, the stockholders and the taxpayers get screwed and the bankers get bonuses. We don't begrudge the bonuses, we just don't think we should pay for them through the bailouts.

I am still working out a Tea Party position on bailouts that is cogent and deals with this complexity in a simple way. Here are some things to think about. First, we should demand that politicians allow at least some big banks to fail. The bankers have called the government's bluff and keep raking in the chips. Second, we should say, ok, if you're going to be too big to fail, fine, you're going to have to keep increasing your reserves so that you don't fail. (No time to fully flesh this out today, but I think reserve requirements should scale up once a firm reaches a significant market share. This will act as a brake on unbridled growth by one institution as well.)

Third, we should demand transparency for all financial assets. In October 2008, I had a chance to talk to some municipal bond traders. We were arguing about the need for a bailout, me contra, as you might expect. Since we got dug in our positions; I asked a different question, because even then it was obvious that the mortgage backed security free-fall was the real killer, roiling the markets. I asked if there had been transparency and good information about the underlying value of the assets backing the securities, would this problem have occurred. They agreed that it would not have because market forces would have come into play earlier, so their would have been more time for big firms to adjust.

In summary, we should demand an end to "too big to fail." We should demand transparency in the way that assets are priced. Finally, we should demand that banks can't take risks when their risks are subsidized, such as through deposit insurance. I welcome the comments of those more knowledgeable in this field than I.

More Tea Party Photos and Video

Our Flag.

Dawn, addressing the crowd.

Folks honking their support.


A view of the crowd.


Counter-demonstrators. Notice the socialist sign.

Location of the private après-parti.

Tea Party Saturday in San Diego

We made it to the Tea Party rally on Harbor Drive in San Diego this morning. Both boys wanted to go, so it was a family outing. Credit to Waynok for today's pictures and video (if I can get a YouTube account going and fix Java, I may upload some clips.) We were a little late to the proceedings, having stopped at the Starbucks near the trolley station prior to taking public transport to the event. Turns out the opportunity cost wasn't as high as we might have thought. Someone at the City, hearing about the event, decided to gouge citizens $10 per car, for what is normally free parking. (I have no problem paying for parking, but when the city uses it as a means to attempt limit freedom of assembly, when parking is normally free on the weekend, then I take issue.)

We had a great time showing solidarity with the hundreds who ignored the rain to have a great time. We signed petitions and listened to speeches and shook hands with people whose signs and T-shirts we liked. Bought some T-shirts from SarahB. We heard appeals from representatives of not one, but two candidates, who want to challenge Susan Davis in our predominantly Democrat 53rd Congressional district. Something is definitely going on.

Lots of folks driving by honked their support. Even a driver of a city bus honked, smiled and waved too. Something is going on.

Across the street the counter-demonstration was pretty thin. A few dozen tops. Also, I couldn't figure out their purpose. A bunch of them had peacenik signs, as if a pro-war platform is the focus of the Tea Parties. Another group had signs supporting universal health care, "Single Payer Now" and "Health Care is a Right not a Privilege" were two signs. But then I noticed that they also said they were from socialistworkers.org. What morons. The Tea Party position is that the Obamacare and like bills are socialist, and you guys go and make our point. Thanks for the help.

Roger Hedgecock was great. He talked about one person making a difference and standing up for what's right. I admit that I have often concluded that the average American didn't care about constitutional limits the way I did, but now I know otherwise. Like Winston Churchill said of another war against tyranny:

Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

Afterwards, we got lunch nearby. We ended up at Cefalu Pizza. I may post a full review on B-Daddy's Other blog, but suffice to say they had Stone Pale Ale on draft and a terrific torpedo sub on baguette.

B-Daddy in his Viva La Reagan Revolucion shirt enjoying a Stone and Torpedo.

All in all and excellent day.

P.S. I have changed my masthead tag line to reflect the way that I believe I can best support the Tea Party movement, (Unofficial Chief Ideologist of the San Diego Tea Party Movement.) However, my ideology may or may not be mainstream to the movement. I invite the comments of Tea Partiers after viewing the Freedom Coalition Agenda, my semi-official platform, which pre-dates the Tea Parties. I will admit in advance that I am remiss in posting a plank about financial regulation and bailouts.

Most Ethical

Pictured at right is the Chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, in Nancy Pelosi's most ethical congress ever. Mr. Rangel has been having some problems of late. For a full summary see the ProPublica article. A little taste would include: abuse of New York's rent control laws, use of Congressional stationary to solicit funds for his foundation from companies with business before his committee, and failing to pay taxes on a Caribbean villa (ironic or par for the course for the chair of the House' tax writing committee.) I guess Democrats are conservative, in the sense that they don't like higher taxes after all.

Now the House ethics committee has laid a turd at Speaker Pelosi's doorstep that is going to give her trouble (and hopefully harm the chances of passing Obamacare through distraction.) Here is a little tidbit:

Ms. Pelosi did say she had not read the findings of the House ethics committee, which determined that he violated Congressional gift rules by accepting corporate-sponsored trips in 2007 and 2008. But she parsed the ruling a bit differently than the panel itself, saying it didn’t find that he had knowledge of the sponsorships himself. “And I think that’s an important statement they made,” she said.

The ethics report, however, said that while it had no evidence Mr. Rangel personally knew of the sponsors, “Representative Rangel was responsible for the knowledge and actions of his staff and the performance of their official duties.”

When the Democrats took the majority in the House in 2006, here is what Pelosi said:

"The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history."

So now that the Speaker is faced with an ethical scandal, her response has been the typical stonewalling, obfuscation and outright lies we have come to expect from Washington. Certainly no better and probably worse than Republican responses to scandal. Even Moulitsas of DailyKos fame is calling for Rangel to give up his powerful Ways & Means chair. For an in depth analysis of why that isn't happening soon, you can read the Slate article here. But in summary, Rangel has too much power as a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus and Pelosi got burned by them over the Jefferson, I've got cash in the freezer, scandal.

The Republican party need to pound the Democrats on this issue daily. In these times, saving Rangel is a loser for Pelosi. Running against Pelosi and Rangel in purple districts seems like an easy winning strategy. Now I say this, not out of love for Republicans, they have yet to win back my trust, but because I hope for gridlock so that the Congress doesn't pass bad bills. It seems like some of the worst ideas to come out of Congress are when one party is in full control of Senate, House and Presidency. Clintoncare was launched with Dem majorities, as was Obamacare. The Republicans pushed through the moronic Medicare part B drug entitlement, so they aren't exempt. So I say, hooray for divided government.

Weekend Music Chill

After suffering through seven and a half hours of Obama at the health care snoozapalooza, I couldn't blame the Republicans if they were thinking of this after a while. Trivia contest, without looking it up on YouTube, what airport was this footage taken from?

Cuss Free Week in California?

The California legislature, apparently feeling pretty good about themselves and how they are handling California's finances, passed a law to make the first week in March a "Cuss-Free" week.

What the f***?

I have spent a life time trying to unlearn bad habits I picked up from close association with sailors, so I am sympathetic to the idea that we shouldn't swear. But dang, you really think this law is going to help? And aren't you causing enough trouble, passing a Canadian style health care bill for California in the midst of its worst budget crisis ever?

It's enough to make me swear like a sailor.

Stupid Column of the Week

I continue to be amazed at lefty dismissal of the Tea Party as rubes or worse. Frank Thomas, continues in his "What's the Matter with Kansas" style in today's WSJ. He puts the money quote up front:

The free-market system blunders into recession; its victims flock to the free-market banner. And here we go again.

News flash, Mr. Frank, the collapse of so many financial institutions had nothing to do with the free market capitalism and everything to do with the crony capitalism of too big to fail. Even we really had a free market, then these firms would have gone under. (For a pretty reasonable historical perspective by an outsider on the Tea Party movement see Walter Russell Mead's Do Soldiers Drink Tea? The publication, the American Interest, seems a little too CFR for my readers, but it was still a good article.)

The reason the victims are flocking to the free-market banner is that those who truly espouse it's principles, like Ron Paul, have said all along, that too big to fail is a recipe for disaster and financial institutions should be allowed to fail.

Now I happen to not quite fully agree with Ron Paul, but he is clearly closer to the truth than Thomas Frank. It is time to add a plank to the Freedom Coalition agenda, my personal Tea Party agenda, about financial regulation. I just need to get a little more free time together for blogging. But my idea will be simple, if a financial institution is too big to fail, then it is too big to fail; and will have to have ever increasing reserves to ensure that it doesn't fail.

Meanwhile, see you Free-Marketeers on Harbor Drive on Saturday with your Gadsden Flags.

I am Spartacus

Temple of Mut has a great project that you should participate in. Recommend you read her whole post. The project is in response to this news reported by Andrew Breitbart:

Big Government has learned that Clintonistas are plotting a “push/pull” strategy. They plan to identify 7-8 national figures active in the tea party movement and engage in deep opposition research on them. If possible, they will identify one or two they can perhaps ‘turn’, either with money or threats, to create a mole in the movement. The others will be subjected to a full-on smear campaign.

The idea is to identify all of us as "The leader of the Tea Party Movement." Here are some entries for Mrs. Daddy and myself.






In his book, The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge talks about the scene in Spartacus, (video at Temple of Mut) where the slaves all stand up to say "I am Spartacus." In Chapter 11, Shared Vision, Senge has this to say about the power of shared vision, that in my opinion, the Tea Party represents:

... the loyalty of Spartacus' army was not to Spartacus the man. Their loyalty was to a shared vision which Spartacus had inspired--the idea that they could be free men. This vision was so compelling that no man could bear to give it up and return to slavery.

A shared vision is not an idea. It is not even an important idea such as freedom. It is, rather, a force in people's hearts, a force of impressive power. It may be inspired by an idea, but once it goes further--if it is compelling enough to acquire the support of more than one person--then it is no longer an abstraction. It is palpable. People begin to see it as if it exists. Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as shared vision.

Our shared vision is of free men and women ordering our own affairs as we deem best, with a limited government primarily concerned with protecting, not looting, our liberty. It is the vision of the Founding Fathers, and it lives on, because it is powerful and successful and no other political vision in the history of mankind has proved as compelling.

Health Care Reform that isn't

There are a number of conceptual and semantic difficulties in discussing "health care reform" in the United States. First, we seem to have lost sight of the fact that the overall outcome we desire, is a healthier population. The current Democrat proposals do nothing to make us healthier and in fact could make us sicker, because they will decrease the wealth of the nation and there is a clear connection between living longer and being wealthier. Consider this equation:

Health Care Insurance ≠ Health Care ≠ Health.

Health care reform purports to increase the health of Americans by increasing health care insurance. But health care insurance is not actually insurance, does not increase care and does not make us healthy. How could this be? First, most insurance policies, like your auto insurance, only pay off rarely, and then with considerable deductibles and paperwork. Health insurance pays for every visit to the doctor, it is not really insurance at all, but a way to subsidize treatment costs. Subsidize? Yes, because the insurance you are using either has a favored tax treatment, if funded by your employer, or is directly funded by the government if you are using Medicare, the VA, Medicaid, etc. But we can't really call this insurance. True insurance would be look something like having to reach $5000 per year in out of pocket expenses before it would kick in. This is important because cost containment is never going to happen without politically unacceptable rationing, or getting the consumer involved through the magic of the free market.

But people won't get needed treatment, some will argue. I don't think so. The average person is the best judge of their need for treatment. But stupid people will spread disease by not getting their flu shots, the left will argue. Not when they are already priced at $5 to $30.

Second, health care insurance doesn't increase the care delivered, because of two factors. In the relentless pursuit of cutting costs through bureaucracy, health care insurance makes the doctor's visit more expensive, because of the added staff needed. Second, both private insurance and medicare and medicaid all seek to drive down costs. This has the effect of decreasing the supply of health care available as doctor's opt out of medicare or choose to retire earlier to avoid the bureaucratic pain.

Finally, health care treatment doesn't necessarily make us healthier. Yes, treatment is often needed, but healthier life styles are often far more important to good health. But we don't pay to keep people healthy, only for obtaining treatment, and further, through a system that only pays out when people get sick. What a perverse set of incentives. I'm not saying that people get sick on purpose, but these incentives can't help but encourage the overuse of resources and discourage preventive activity.

I consider my own behavior. I have learned from experience that no doctor is going to help me once I get a cold or the flu. These are viruses that just have to run their course. As a result, when I think I might be exposed, or I start to feel like I might be getting sick, I take action. I get more rest, I gargle, I use zinc and vitamin C. (I don't care if you say the zinc and C don't work, in my experience, they work for me.) I am not always fully successful, but I reduce how long I am sick or avoid it altogether.

Think how much simpler health care would be for all Americans if most visits to the doctor were on a cash basis. Doctor's visits would be involve less waiting, no pesky insurance forms to fill out. Doctor's fees would be lower, no need to hire so many accountants and staff to navigate the labyrinth of the billing process. If you thought you were approaching your catastrophic cap, you could ask the provider for a summary of your costs for the year. (I know this is possible, because I carry no dental insurance, but use a flexible spending account. If I get behind in my claims, the dentist's office helps me catch up.) Finally, you might start shopping around for care, the same way you shop around for a good plumber or mechanic, going on line and looking at doctor's ratings and fees. This would have the free market goodness of driving poor doctor's out of business and improving the performance of the merely mediocre.

What about that whole "increasing health" thing? Hey I'm in the Tea Party, can't we all just take a little responsibility for that ourselves?

Unless we reform health insurance, starting with medicare and medicaid, we will never make progress on building a better health care system in this country.

Weekend Music Chill

Dean reminded me this week of what a great writer Mark Steyn is. I read some of his work and perused his book and decided to dedicate this weekend's music to him. Also this band is one of my all time favorites.

Congressional Endorsement

I live in the California 53rd Congressional district and I am endorsing C. Mason Weaver, a former radio talk show host, for Congress. His nom de scène is Mason Weaver, but his actual name is Clarence Mason, he explains why here. You have to like a guy who wrote a book titled "It's OK to Leave the Plantation," about his journey to conservatism. In the video below he is speaking at an Orange County Tea Party event, (H/T W.C. Varones). If you can't listen to the whole thing, the money line is:
"Someone said that you wanted to hear a black man speak to you without a teleprompter."

The Case for Carbon Culpability

The ongoing slow motion self destruction of the warmist arguments for catastrophic anthropogenic global warming has hopefully saved the United States from a disastrous "cap and trade" bill. The most recent revelations from Professor Phil would be hilarious if they had not caused the waste of so many resources already. Hopefully some real climate science can now get done, so we have a workable theory of how and by how much CO2 is changing the climate.

In the meantime, we should still consider that burning fossil fuels might not be in our long term best interests. First, and foremost, the demand for oil has a tendency to enrich despots the world over; Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, Russia and Venezuela make the list of top ten oil producing nations. Interestingly, so does the United States, but it is not near as important to our economies than those other nations listed because our overall GDP is so much higher.

Second, burning fossil fuels is associated with air pollution and is the primary cause of air pollution. Air pollution is a factor in increased mortality in the United States, and presumably other countries. It would seem prudent to move away from sources of energy that increase the presence of particulate and noxious chemicals in the air.

Finally, there is still a good chance that we are impacting the global climate. Catastrophically? Probably not, but let's not forget that economic dislocations caused by the effects of global warming would still be painful and cause localized hardship at a minimum.

So why am I opposed to "cap and trade?" The experience in Europe with massive fraud and the heavy give-aways in the current bill in Congress persuade me that "cap and trade" will do nothing but transfer wealth to favored or criminal groups. I want to curb carbon emissions in a way that does not harm the economy. The only way that will work is a slow phase in of a carbon tax, coupled with reductions in the income tax, either by rate decreases or rebates. The Carbon Tax Center has some decent economic arguments about how such a tax could be implemented in a revenue neutral way to prevent bankrupting the economy. The only piece they miss is the need for a global tax, because air pollution is a global problem. See study on Chinese air pollution reaching Los Angeles (how ironic).

Weekend Music Chill

For no particular reason, I have been listening to Enya again, after a long hiatus. This is my favorite number from her. This video also reminds me that Mrs. Daddy and I haven't been diving together in too long. The scenes are reminiscent of great diving we did on a vacation to Maui.

Dog Bites Man or Man Bites Dog

There is an old saw in the newspaper business about constitutes news that says "Dog Bites Man" is not news, but "Man Bites Dog" is a worthy headline. So imagine my surprise when I saw the following "Dog Bites Man" headline in this morning's Wall Street Journal:

Senator Prodded Fed to Aid
Ailing Bank From Home State

The article details the efforts of Senator Robert Menendez (D-Clepto) to aid a Jersey bank owned by big contributors to his campaigns by trying to get the Fed to bail out First BankAmericano (I'm not making that up.)

The Fed did not acquiesce to this request; so this should have been the real "Man Bites Dog" headline.

Fed Denies Senator's Sleazy Request