Alabama Tracks

I’ve worked with Carlton for a while and he always plugged his wife Leslie for photographs and such. So when we needed birth announcements I thought we’d give her a whirl. She’s got a pretty nifty website at http://www.simplylphotography.com/ and it’s a good showcase of her talent.

Anyways, she had a real knack for doing the Anne Geddes style of photographs. I was very impressed with her attentiveness and eagerness to work with babies. You can check out her shots of Abby and others on her Facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Montgomery-AL/Simply-L-Photography/120817717938526?ref=sgm&__a=6&

Our newest addition

There’s been a ton of talk and such about the oil spill. Most of it has been posturing and government saying “We’re doing something” when, in reality, the government has no control over the source of the spill. There are questions and I am sure there will be answers. But Rachel Maddow (someone with whom I do not agree with politically) had this to say about Obama’s address to the nation. It’s long (winded) and I mostly agree with point #2, but point #3 is way out there. She proclaims that “the age of oil is over”.

I can only assume that she then left the studio on a unicorn and rode through Fairyland to get home, where her house runs on a clean, reliable fusion reactor.

So, back to reality here. The “age of oil” isn’t over. Oddly enough, John Stewart gives us a history lesson here and basically proves it’s not over. But he doesn’t answer the “why”. Hence, my post here and this odd section (which I promises relates).

Did you go to the grocery store this week? I’m sure you did. I know of nobody in America who doesn’t. Sooner or later, everyone goes. Now, let me ask you something strange: Did you worry that the store would be out of stock? I’m not talking about you variety of cereal here, mind you, I’m talking about bare shelves. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? Now let me ask you this: where does your store get its stock from? Most likely, it was aggregated into a distribution center from various sources.

How did the distribution center get the stock to your store? If you said trucks, give yourself a pat on the back.

Trucks run on oil. Trains run on oil (except for light rail and subway commuter lines). Planes run on oil. Your car also runs on oil. To sum it all up, America has a pretty extensive infrastructure that is run on oil. If the age of oil is over we’re all screwed. Even Miss Maddow. Hardees had, for a while, a slogan of, “Without us, some guys would starve.”

Without oil, you WILL starve.

I’ve been through hurricanes where people run on stores for some supplies. I’ve seen earthquakes turn people into scavengers. And I saw the Louisiana Wal-Mart that was stripped nearly to the bare wall after Katrina by looters. When you lose that infrastructure, hard times come within days. Lose a few roads or the ability to run trucks to an area and see how well you fare.

Odds are you know nothing about crops, livestock, etc. You don’t worry about your next meal because you make money and people who handle those things will gladly sell to you. It’s likely that these people live nowhere near you, hence the need for logistics.

This brings us to an important point. Obama is talking about “green energy” like windmills and solar. But those technologies cannot replace oil because they are methods of generating electricity. In fact, nothing right now can. Ethanol requires far too much land and would price virtually everyone around the world out of corn. Hydrogen is not efficient to extract. Natural gas has it’s own issues. None of them have enough market demand to replace the existing oil infrastructure.

So, like it or not, the age of oil isn’t gone. Not unless you don’t need anything delivered to you anytime soon…

I suppose it’s no secret I’m a Conservative. You can read enough of my posts and ramblings to figure that out. So, like many Conservatives, it was disheartening to see the horrifying bill (yes, horrifying) pass the House with Bart “Lawnchair” Stupak leading the way. The Liberals won. They did it their way and pushed through a bill most Americans see as bad. Still, I have some Liberals I see regularly who are happy it passed and seem perplexed at my dismay, which has now given way to a quiet anger with resolve (no, I will not make inane threats against Congressmen-women-people). I have figured out what I am going to do. But, first, a few notes for those of you wondering why this bill might, quite literally, end America.

1. The bill is designed to bankrupt the health insurance industry. One of the things that has had populist backing in polls is the idea that “pre-existing conditions” are some sort of corporate greed. That we’ll deny you coverage for that health problem because you waited until you got sick to apply. What exacerbates this problem is the tax code. If you buy health insurance through your employer you get it tax free. If you’re self employed or buy your own, you get nothing. So people go where the tax breaks are. Thus, when you lose your job, there goes your insurance. You then have a narrow window to get another job or else you become subject to the pre-existing clause and anything you had before you get re-insured isn’t covered.

It’s just not fair.

Rather than fixing the tax code so all health insurance is deductible (because why would we want to fix the system when we can have Uncle Sam run it?) the Democrats’ solution is to ban the practice. You know, shoot the messenger. There’s a tax penalty if you don’t buy insurance but it’s laughable. The penalty goes up to around $700 a year. That might sound like a lot but consider that this is 1-2 months of health insurance premiums we’re talking about (and that’s based on numbers from this year, not after they’re adjusted for things down the road). Rapidly, the health insurance premiums will outpace that fixed fine.

So why is this bad? Well, consider that it’s cheaper to pay the fine than comply. Further, consider that insurance companies can’t deny you coverage for your pre-existing conditions. So let’s say Bob doesn’t like health insurance. He skips out and pays his tax fine instead. Then Bob starts getting ill. He goes to the doctor (still cheaper to pay out of pocket and the fine) and the doctor tells him it’s cancer. Right now, Bob would be out of luck. But, thanks to Obamacare, he can go right out and buy insurance. So Bob is shelling out, say, $500/mo for health insurance while the insurance company is on the hook for, say, $1000/mo in treatments. To add insult to injury, Bob recovers after a year and, surprise, drops his health insurance to go back to paying the fines. So Bob paid $6000 in health insurance premiums for $12000 in care. Initially, the health insurance companies will take that out of your pocket but there’s only so long you can run a system this upside down. Eventually the insurance industry will be as bad off as the banking industry was last year. What does that mean? Bailout! Except that, in this case, the wise Democrats will go “Hey, we just need to go to single payer. Everyone is now on the government system!”

2. This bill breaks the bank. Assume that the “savings” the Democrats claim are real. Some $180B reported and touted over 10 years. Sounds like a lot.

The federal government spent $400B in Feb 2010. Hmm… that’s not so much after all. Add in the doc fix bill and suddenly we’re in red ink. Consider further that there was all sorts of gimmickery to pass this bill as “fiscally neutral” and suddenly things look bad. The bill has 4 years of taxes and revenue before the spending starts. The estimated cost from 2014 to 2024 is $2.6 trillion, or $2,600,000,000,000 (granted such projections are wrong but EVERY entitlement projection has been well under ACTUAL costs). Add in the current massive federal deficits and we’re looking at some $14T in debt. Worse, the bill does nothing to address costs. All we’ve done is put ourselves on the hook for a health care takeover.

Solomon said that the borrower is slave to the lender. In this case, we’re slaves to China and anyone else who bought our debt. There’s only 3 ways out of this, too. Cut spending (with Democrats? fat chance), raise taxes (immensely unpopular) or inflate it out. You inflate it out by printing more money and devaluing the currency. Destroys your credit ratings with other countries but you can cut massive deficits by a lot just by doing so. There’s just one more itty bitty catch to doing this: your money becomes worthless too. Ever seen those old signs that advertise Coke bottles for $0.05? Wonder why they charge you $1.50 now? Inflation. When this is all said and done that bottle of Coke might run you $3.00 or more. And that’s at Wal-Mart. There’s nothing to stop Obama’s Fed from doing this and Obama alone sets this policy (or has the ability to stop it).

On the upside, the Democrats will have a reason to raise the minimum wage… assuming anyone will hire you.

I could go on but, on those two points alone, this bill needs repeal. So what am I going to do? I’m going to do what I suggest you do. If you want change do two simple things

1. Vote. Not just in Nov but soon in your primaries. Find someone who is willing to support repeal. Here’s a hint: that person is not going to be a Democrat (thank you, Bart Stupak). It may not even be a Republican. Read up and vote. Vote for House (and Senate)

2. Make a political donation. I don’t have a ton of money but I intend to donate. If everyone mad at this bill donates, say $5-$10 to a candidate willing to vote for repeal that would send a message louder than any protest (and certainly far more than making stupid phone calls to voice mail).

Here’s hoping for real reform (and repeal)

I read this post this weekend and it got me to thinking about the subject of nihilism in politics. Specifically the question raised

I’m advancing a very simple proposition here. Conservatives can be really, really wrong about everything, and centralized solutions could be the only responsible course of action across every policy domain. But is it possible that we conservatives are sincerely wrong, and that we care about more than “power and status”?

I’m trapped in this cycle of thinking that our political leaders, regardless of partisan affiliation, are people, with all the foibles and limitations that this entails. While I do think that a bottomless hunger for power and status exists in the world (we can call this “evil” as a shorthand), I know enough liberals and conservatives to suspect that something else might be at work in our domestic political conflicts.

I don’t think either Salam, nor Sullivan, delve deeply enough into the issue. Sullivan is dismissive and I think Salam is genuinely looking for an answer. It’s not an easy one but it’s important to understand the fundamental difference between Liberals and Conservatives.

Before I go any further, it’s important to note that, in any philosophy, you have two basic groups of people (you can subdivide this a lot more but I’m keeping it simple for the sake of the argument). The largest group is what I call the Believers. These are people who agree with the basic tenets of your argument or movement but only in a visceral sense. They don’t pull the arguments apart or look at it from multiple angles. Instead, they’ve bought into the introductory arguments (which is not to say the arguments are right or wrong, just that they are introductory and often have little substance).  Believers simply take their position for granted. They tend to hang around other Believers and talk in hushed tones about those “other people” who are not Believers. If you ask them why they believe in their philosophy (or worse, questions the introductory arguments) you get a wide range of reactions from silence, to anger, to rationalizations.

In short, Believers generally aren’t sure why they believe, they just know that they believe. They are also the foot soldiers, pawns, hitmen, and evangelists.

Then you have the Core. The Core are your forest people. They not only know why they believe, they can defend it backwards and forwards. If you spot a flaw they might move to straw men or attack you personally. If they’re more rational, they might just agree to disagree but it depends greatly what the forest (the real forest in some cases) is and what they would give up if they were to even admit you might have a point. What determines their reaction depends more on whether or not the Core is based on lies or truth. No matter what the philosophy, the Core is more limited because Believers don’t need to see the forest, they might reject the forest, or because there’s a high cost to getting into the Core that your average Believer doesn’t want to pay.

So what does this have to do with nihilism and politics?

Liberalism and Conservatism are opposite ends of the spectrum. Nihilism is where you see the other end as a force to be stopped at all costs. In politics, this translates into “I can’t stand that you’re in power so I’m going to block you at every turn.” This is a bad policy because it causes serious issues to not be addressed. Each side accuses the other of it all the time. Right now, Liberals (Sullivan) are lobbing it at Conservatives over health care. But it’s important to remember that Liberals have done their own share.

As Salam mentions, in 2005, Pres. Bush wanted to reform Social Security. SS is built on a bad assumption that takes money from current workers to pay current recipients. Bush wanted a change to allow workers to invest some in the stock market. I have no idea how sound the idea was but Liberals proceeded to decry it as a wrecking of the system. They complained that the stock market was risky and that SS will not go bankrupt for many years to come. But the latter argument is weak. Saying it’s not broken now because it won’t fail tomorrow is a poor policy. The system will fail and nobody denies it. A better argument (if less popular) would have been that Liberals didn’t want to deal with the issue. The problem is that it looks very much like the real answer was Nihilism. Specifically the political calculus was that Republicans were weak on the issue (few wanted to take up the cause) and that they would pay no price for doing so.

Sadly, they were right. Few understood the core flaw and Republicans balked at spending the political capital.

So is Conservative opposition to health care Nihilism in kind? Not quite.

First, it’s important to understand that Liberalism’s Core is the philosophy that “The ends justify the means”. What that means is that, if it gets us to where we want to go, we should take it, even if taking it involves poor, wrong or even evil options. With regards to health care, the system really does need reform, but the problem is that the Liberals (like Ted Kennedy) have really meant that their idea of reform is something called Single Payer. Single Payer (proposed by Bill and Hillary Clinton in 1993) is where the government is the only entity that can pay for your health care. It sounds good until you begin to look at the forest. Single Payer means the government is the sole determiner of what care you can and cannot (or will not) get. Worse, the model is simply a tree in a larger forest still, where the government can then determine what you can or cannot consume because, if you make poor consumption choices, the government will, eventually, be on the hook for the consequences. So prepare to pony up punitive sales taxes in the same mold as tobacco products for things you normally eat now because, if you drink too much soda, eat too much red meat or run afoul of anything else lobbyists can get through Congress, the taxpayers will have to pay for it. Worst of all, is that when anything is made “free” by the government, it has to be rationed. In the UK (with single payer), they aim to get you a hospital bed in 18 weeks (4.5 months).

This plan, for obvious reasons, is unpopular with all but the most Liberal (the Core) people. It failed to pass. So we have Round 2 with Pres Obama. This time, we have ideas floated like the “Public Option”, which looks suspiciously like a path to Single Payer. Basically, the government would create its own insurance plan and create a poor mechanism intentionally designed to ensnare more and more people until all people are insured by the government. The Core understands this. Believers are either in denial that it will happen (willful naivete) or they don’t care. But the question is why all the horse trading, deception, and smoke and mirrors for an issue we’re all supposed to be behind? Why the rush to pass one massive bill that does a number of odd things that look like political payoffs when it would be more prudent to make a smaller bill and work with Conservatives?

The answer, sadly, is that the Liberals want their power. If the government gets to decide, sooner or later then it puts them in the drivers seat of your life. You learn what they want you to learn, eat what they want you to eat, and get what treatments they want you to get. They’ll promise to do better on the long waits and let up on the restrictions that people chafe under but now they’ve got you by the nose and they won’t let you go (and we won’t let ourselves go either).

In short, “health care reform” is a bad deal the way it’s written. There are real and salient reasons to oppose it. I don’t see Conservatives as Nihilists on this issue. It’s not the Liberal road or nothing. I do hope that both side will start working together soon to get real reform.

If not, I can see the Liberal forest start losing trees.