Obsidian Wings

A good point, sort of...

I love reading Marginal Revolutions. They always discuss interesting things in interesting ways. Today Alex has a description of medical costs not spiraling out of control:

Laser eye surgery has the highest patient satisfaction ratings of any surgery, it has been performed more than 3 million times in the past decade, it is new, it is high-tech, it has gotten better over time and... laser eye surgery has fallen in price. In 1998 the average price of laser eye surgery was about $2200 per eye. Today the average price is $1350, that's a decline of 38 percent in nominal terms and slightly more than that after taking into account inflation.

Why the price decline in this market and not others? Could it have something to do with the fact that laser eye surgery is not covered by insurance, not covered by Medicaid or Medicare, and not heavily regulated? Laser eye surgery is one of the few health procedures sold in a free market with price advertising, competition and consumer driven purchases. I'm seeing things more clearly already.

Of course he is a little carried away there. One reason prices are low is because laser eye surgery can be deferred, and you can shop around on the basis of quality and price. This isn't easily available to people having a heart attack, though it is available for long term or maintenance issues. It is worth noting that laser eye surgery has been steadily improving over the last few years. So as the price goes down and quality goes up, the overall value of the surgery becomes a better buy than even the declining price would show. His basic point remains--people are getting more for less in one of the few health care markets which is open to free competition. Maybe the post should entitled: "Good Point, to consider talking more about..."

Caveat Emptor: Can Buying This Home Cost You Your Rights?

The branch of the homebuilding company, Mercedes Homes, operating in Brevard County Florida, writes into the fine print of their contracts that customers cannot complain about inferior construction to their neighbors. They actually filed a lawsuit against one woman for doing so:

Jay Ann Contardi couldn't imagine a problem any worse than the deluge of rainwater pouring into her leaking home. That is, until she ran afoul of the aggressive lawyers representing her builder, Mercedes Homes.

"It has changed my life. I'm afraid to talk to my neighbors. I'm afraid to walk my daughter to the bus stop. I'm afraid to talk to you right now," she told NewsChannel 2 reporter Dan Billow.

She's not the only one. Other Mercedes homeowners asked us to protect their identities.

"I feel like I'm in a police state. I can't do anything. I have no avenues. I have nowhere to turn," one homeowner said. That's what it feels like when you're sued for talking to your neighbor.

In the company's plush corporate offices, executives hatched a plan to make buyers sign away their First Amendment rights.

"It's there in black and white. The customer should read his or her contract thoroughly before they enter into it," said Patrick Roche, Mercedes Attorney.

When you buy a Mercedes home, the fine print says you can't complain to your neighbors, call the news media or even carry a picket sign, even if your new quarter-million dollar home leaks through the roof, walls and windows.

Rather Stepping Down

I can hear the champagne corks popping now.

Dan Rather announced Tuesday that he will step down as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News in March, 24 years after his first broadcast in that position.

Rather will continue to work full-time at CBS News as a correspondent for both editions of 60 Minutes, as well as on other assignments for the news division.

Pity really. What will the author of Ratherbiased.com do with himself now?

Nothing They Do Surprises Me Any More.

From the Washington Post:

"Republican budget writers say they may have found a way to cut the federal deficit even if they borrow hundreds of billions more to overhaul the Social Security system: Don't count all that new borrowing.

As they lay the groundwork for what will probably be a controversial fight over Social Security, Republican lawmakers and the Bush administration are examining a number of accounting strategies that would allow the expensive transition to a partially privatized Social Security system without -- at least on paper -- expanding the country's record annual budget deficits. The strategies include, for example, moving the costs of Social Security reform "off-budget" so they are not counted against the government's yearly shortfall."

Right. Deficits cause three sorts of problems. First, they have all sorts of harmful effects on the economy that have nothing to do with anyone's perceptions. Second, if potential purchasers of our bonds conclude that we are irresponsibly running up unsustainable levels of debt, they might stop buying, which would cause further problems. But these purchasers, especially the largest ones (e.g., other countries' central banks and large investors) are unlikely to be deceived by this charade: as Kent Conrad said (in the Post): "This gets to the markets, and people who are in the markets can add and subtract." Finally, there is a political problem: if voters think Republicans are running up too much debt, they might lose popularity. This is by far the least serious set of problems, but it is the only one that this proposal would deal with at all. That tells you something about the administration's priorities.

We have already debated the question whether Social Security is really in financial trouble, so I won't go over that question here. I do want to comment on one argument advanced in the Post article: ""The diversion of a portion of payroll taxes to personal accounts is akin to prepaying a mortgage," R. Glenn Hubbard, former chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in the current issue of Business Week. "If the transition costs are borrowed, the resulting higher explicit federal debt in the near term is offset by lower implicit debt (Social Security obligations) in the longer run."" This line of reasoning seems to rely on the assumption that there is no significant difference between explicit debt (i.e., actual borrowing) and implicit debt (i.e., Social Security payments we are committed to making at some point in the future.) But this is wrong: most obviously, you have to pay interest on explicit debt, but not on implicit debt. And the interest payments that would be incurred by converting several trillion dollars of implicit debt to actual debt are huge.

MoMA Reborn: The Happy Hangover Review

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has reopened in midtown Manhattan and the reviews are in. They range from unlearned and dully dismissive (see New York Post columnist Gersh Kuntzman in Newsweek) to fawning and overcongratulatory (see New York Times art critic, Holland Cotter's love letter). In other words, what you'd expect.

What I didn't expect (my personal taste in museums running toward industrial and rough around the edges) was to be so charmed by the new building (by famed Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi). From what I had heard, I expected to hate it. Artnet columnist and all around crumudgeon Charlie Finch had me expecting something terribly cold and corporate:

Sitting in the spacious sixth-floor atrium of the brave new Museum of Modern Art, listening to a dentefricial Ron Lauder praise himself and his wealthy colleagues, one remembers a more intimate MoMA where working class people brought a sandwich in a brown bag and a book of poems, or Shakespeare, to rest and bask in the temple of art.

That world, and that ethos, are gone forever. Even 9/11 could not bring them back, at least not in midtown Manhattan. Looking at Rosenquist’s F-111 like an altarpiece, one can hear the little blonde girl quoting Pogo, "We have met the enemy, and it is us."

Looking at Taniguchisan’s sterile environment, like a larger version of the interiors at MoMA QNS, one thinks of the auditorium scenes in films such as Charly or 1984. The individual is sucked out of existence in this matrix; the individual artist disappears in the wake of the exchange value of the art object.

We had a totally different experience at the opening we attended last night (the fiance and I). It may have been the flowing cocktails, but we had a great time and found the new building wonderous.

Another Silly Article On Liberal Professors

Academics are, on the whole, more liberal than the population at large. I would be interested to know why this is so, and what effects, if any, it has. I don't usually find conservative reporting on this subject illuminating, since it generally doesn't go beyond reporting anecdotes which, while bad, are not obviously more than occasional episodes of the sort that one would expect, human nature being what it is. (Nor is it obvious to me that a disproportionate number of cases of professorial bad behavior involve politics: I knew a professor once who spent the better part of a class making fun of a student for not drinking beer at parties. Really.) It is amusing to see conservatives responding with the sort of horrified cries of victimhood that they disapprove of in other contexts, e.g. those involving racism and sexism; but it's not particularly enlightening.

An article by John Fund looked as though it might be an exception: it actually cites studies and not just anecdotes, for instance. But on closer examination it's not. To start with, the studies themselves don't seem to prove much. Of the three Fund cites, two just claim that a disproportionate number of professors are Democrats, which says little about why this is so or what effects it has. But a third claims to do more. Here's how Fund describes it:

"A forthcoming study by Stanley Rothman of Smith College looked at a random sample of more than 1,600 undergraduate faculty members from 183 institutions of higher learning. He found that across all faculty departments, including business and engineering, academics were over five times as likely to be liberals as conservatives.

Mr. Rothman used statistical analysis to determine what factors explained how academics ended up working at elite universities. Marital status, sexual orientation and race didn't play a statistically significant role. Academic excellence, as measured by papers published and awards conferred, did. But the next best predictor was whether the professor was a liberal. To critics that argue his methodology is flawed, Mr. Rothman points out that he used the same research tools long used in courts by liberal faculty members to prove race and sex bias at universities. Liberals criticizing his methods may find themselves hoist by their own petard."

Child Malnutrition Rising in Iraq

If I had a dollar for each time, in response to arguing that the innocent Iraqis who've died in this war deserved a better solution to the problem of Hussein, I was told about the number of children dying of malnutrition under Hussein's regime (who presumedly were now better off since we invaded), I'd, well, actually I'd try to send the money over there to help curb this situation:

Malnutrition among Iraq's youngest children has nearly doubled since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq despite U.N. efforts to deliver food to the war-ravaged country, a Norwegian research group said Monday.

Since the March 2003 invasion, malnutrition among children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years has grown from 4 percent to 7.7 percent, said Jon Pedersen, deputy managing director of the Oslo, Norway-based Fafo Institute for Applied Social Science, which conducted the survey. (emphasis mine)

I know there's some validity to the claim that  "it's the insurgency's fault." However, securing Iraq to where the relief agencies can do their work safely is our responsibility and moral obligation. There are no excuses here. Malnutrition is low in the Kurdish area and, as one would expect, higher in the high-conflict areas. Still, the degree of increase here is confusing to the group that conducted the study:

Regardless of the unrest that has gripped the country, Pedersen said the findings were still puzzling.

"Given the fact that World Food Program has distributed a lot of food, it's quite clear that one could expect some malnutrition, but the level that there is, it's a bit difficult to explain."

I'd bet part of it is stress. You don't eat well when you're stressed, even if the food is available. Between the oppressive rule of the insurgents in some areas, the bombings, the evacuations, the shame of being occupied, the uncertainty, etc., it's not at all odd to me that some childen would lose their appetites. I could never eat when stressed out as a kid.

The Eagle Platform

One of my on-line acquaintances is developing what he calls the "Eagle Platform": a political platform which is not closely tied to either current political party in US politics, though it draws from a slightly conservative and more strongly libertarian bent. It provides an excellent starting point for useful political conversation and can be found here at the website of DerekJames. Since I haven't received permission to reproduce in toto, I will just comment on two aspects of it. The abortion and death penalty statements are not directly in line with my personal moral intuitions, but represent an excellent compromise--especially if taken together:

Abortion We recognize the inherent rights of a woman to make decisions about her own body, while acknowledging that personhood is contingent upon an individual's level of development. As a pregnancy progresses, an increasing amount of rights should be conferred to the developing child, and accordingly balanced against the rights of the mother. We agree with the wisdom of the Roe v. Wade decision, in allowing women unrestricted abortion rights in the first trimester, allowing states to limit those rights at their discretion in the second trimester, and allowing states to completely ban the practice, if they choose, in the third trimester.

Death Penalty While the death penalty might be just in principle, for any civilized society, it is impractical. For the state to put a citizen to death, the burden of proof of their guilt must be far beyond the normal threshold for reasonable doubt, facilitating multiple appeals and a prolonged process that in itself could be considered cruel and unusual punishment. We therefore find it reasonable and humane to eliminate the use of the death penalty at the federal level as well as prohibiting states from using it.

I would avoid officially ratifying the trimester system, because I expect that as technology improves it will be possible to support babies outside the womb at some point earlier than the beginning of the third trimester. I don't see any reason why a woman should have an unlimited right to abort when she can remove the child from her body and let it live. These two concepts might be interesting in tandem, because they represent two sides of a raging debate that often go hand in hand. I would have no trouble giving up the death penalty as part of a compromise to allow full protection for viable fetuses. The drug legalization proposal is likely to be very controversial, but I think it strikes the proper tone for further debate:

Drugs We feel that the criminalization of drugs has been a costly, wasteful, and unneccesary distraction. Recreational drugs, if regulated by the FDA, and sold under restricted conditions, would lead to less crime, less abuse, and would contribute an additional source of tax revenue.

I am conflicted about drug legalization. I have seen drug use destroy the lives of many people around me, so I am not at all indifferent to the costs of its use. But there are costs to criminalization as well, and they are under-appreciated. There is a black-market cost. Criminalizing common drugs feeds the creation of gangs and gang-warfare. Both have contributed greatly to the destruction of many of our inner-cities. Fighting those gangs and the enforcing the criminalization of drugs has led to more erosion of our civil rights than the Patriot Act ever did. Because drugs are easily hidden and greatly in demand, police have pioneered ever-intrusive search and detection techniques, and the perversion of police-forfeiture without criminal level review has gotten out of control. Furthermore the criminalization of certain organic drugs (grown elsewhere) has led to common use of far more dangerous synthetic drugs. This can be seen in the popularization of crystal-meth which can be produced at great risk in a bathtub over cocaine (a bad drug but not nearly as horrific in its effects) which is grown outside of the country and imported. Furthermore the drug trade is currently paying for terrorism, which we certainly can't like. Drug abuse is bad, but it is possible (as with the Prohibition) that criminalization is worse. Certainly we could legalize some of the currently prohibited drugs without the world coming to an end. Anyway, I find the Eagle Party platform very interesting. Future of the Republican Party? Maybe we should discuss some of it.

Solution for a Nation Drowning in Debt? A Boat, of Course.

hat tip to constant reader wilfred for this item
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In our house, when money's tight, we consider which luxuries we normally enjoy that we can do without. We eat out less often. We take a cheaper vacation than the one we had hoped for. We keep on walking past Century 21*, pretending it's not there.

When the Federal government finds itself in the same position, however, it decides it's time for the taxpayers to buy the president a yacht.

The Senate voted 65-30 for the legislation late on Saturday that sets aside funds for a range of priorities including a presidential yacht, foreign aid and energy.

OK, so it's only $2 million dollars to buy back the U.S.S. Sequoia which was sold three decades ago. (A price distressing the current owners, who are claiming it's now worth $9.8 million.) But, come on, what else would we spend that $2 million on, if not a boat for the Bushes. I mean how else do we expect them to live in the style they're accustomed to, if we deny them this basic necessity? But that's not the ultimate insult. The ultimate insult is that this pork-ladden monster** is something these jokers are proud of.

"I'm very proud of the fact that we held the line and made Congress make choices and set priorities, because it follows our philosophy," Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said in House debate.

Transparent Government: A Suggestion

Josh Marshall and others have reported on something that someone tried to slip into an appropriations bill while no one was looking:

"At the last minute, Republican leaders tried to slip in a provision that would give certain committee chairman and their staffers unlimited access to any American's tax return, with none of the standard privacy protections applying.

You heard that right.

They could pull anyone's tax return, read it over and do whatever they wanted with the information. Those who would have this power would be the chairs and ranking members of the senate and house appropriations committees and subcommittees and "their designees."

The key is that the privacy rights provisions, and criminal and civil penalties that go with them, don't apply for the appropriations committees.

At the last minute, Senate Democrats caught the language (keep in mind these omnibus bills can be like phone books), protested and the Republicans beat a hasty retreat."

This particular provision seems to have been blocked. But the general problem remains: this bill was completed on Friday night, the House voted on it on Saturday, and the Senate would have voted on it either yesterday or today had a Senate staffer not caught this particular provision. In other words, Congressional representatives had between nine and thirty-six hours to read a bill that is over 1,000 pages long and contains nine appropriations bills rolled into one emergency spending measure. As CNN put it, "The bill and explanatory report ... were about 14 inches tall, leaving many lawmakers baffled about its precise contents." I'll say: I read very fast, but the idea of slogging through fourteen inches of anything, let alone appropriations bills, in a day or so is absolutely unimaginable to me.

This is not a new problem: many bills are substantially rewritten either in the Rules Committee or on conference, and then reported out to the Congress with very little time before a vote. "Under the House rules, 48 hours are supposed to elapse before floor action. But in 2003, the leadership, 57 percent of the time, wrote rules declaring bills to be "emergency" measures, allowing then to be considered with as little as 30 minutes notice. On several measures, members literally did not know what they were voting for." (cite.) This, of course, undermines our democracy: our elected leaders need to have an opportunity to read bills before they vote them into law.

I have, therefore, a proposal. We need to urge our elected representatives to propose and/or support changes to the rules governing the House and Senate that would require a reasonable period of time to elapse between a bill being made available to the House or Senate as a whole and its being voted on. A minimum of three days or one day per one hundred pages of legislation (including the bill and any supporting documents), whichever is greater, seems reasonable to me, but someone else might have a better idea. Moreover, this rule needs to be made harder to set aside: as noted above, there is already a requirement to allow two days to elapse before voting on a bill, but it does not apply to "emergency" bills, and these days the majority of bills are declared by the House leadership to be "emergency" bills. So I propose that this rule could be waived only if the Speaker of the House or the President of the Senate publicly declares before the House or Senate that some state of affairs constitutes an emergency and explains why this emergency justifies waiving the rule for a given bill. (Declaring it before the House or Senate would ensure that it was televised by CSPAN, which might be a deterrent to abuse.)

Does anyone else think that this is a good idea? If so, how do you think we might go about getting it proposed?