CASH FOR CLUNKERS?

My 1998 Dodge pickup just came out of the shop, terminally ill. It’s not immediate – cooling system leak around some of the freeze plugs in the engine block – but the cost of (eventual) repair will far exceed the value of the truck.

So what am I to do? Well, the truck clearly qualifies for the “cash for clunkers” program, so here’s a thought. Use the truck as a trade-in on a Prius or some other high-demand “green” automobile, turn it around and sell it immediately on the private market, and take the remainder of the $4500 and buy another used pickup.

I wonder haw many other potential buyers are thinking the same?

[Update] Well, it was a good idea while it lasted ... and the Cato Institute beat me to the idea.

A FEW THOUGHTS ON “HEALTHCARE”

Since I’ve been rather intimately involved in healthcare for the past couple of months (with a family member in the hospital and now in a skilled nursing facility), herewith are some observations on the state of healthcare.

Nurses, technicans, and technical staff intimately involved with the patients are, for the most part, qualified, professional, caring – and overworked.

Doctors are not engaged. This is not to be taken as that they are not qualified, or professional, or caring; simply that they are not engaged with either patient or family. Visits are sporadic, unscheduled, and short – there’s never time to sit and get to know patient or family – so process overwhelms patient/family needs.

The process stinks – and that’s being kind.

Here’s an analogy: Patient and family go to a restaurant. They pay upon entering, are given a menu - of limited choice but multiple courses, order, and the order is sent to the kitchen. The kitchen is staffed by 15 chefs, who enter and leave at random, none of whom stay for more than a few minutes. Communication, if it occurs, is by “sticky note” left on the countertop. Courses are served at random, and when “time’s up” the patrons must leave, finished or not.

That, in a nutshell, is healthcare process as practiced today.

What, if anything, will change with Obamacare? My guess is that prices will go up, menu selections will become even more limited, and the maitre d’ will tell the patient/family what they can/cannot have.

WASHINGTON DC IS A THREE-RING CIRCUS

The Daily Show via Instapundit.


If only the popcorn weren't so damned expensive ....

AGAINST OBAMACARE? IN AUSTIN?

Austin, TX, has to be the most liberal city in the state. And yet ....

The Austin American-Statesman coverage is here.

Via Instapundit.

A TEACHABLE MOMENT

But will Paul Krugman (Nobel Laureate in Economics) learn?

KATIE ARRIVES

Big sister Annie is proud to announce the birth of her new baby sister Clara Katherine (Katie) Hankamer.



Katie was born at 4:09 pm on July 28th. She weighs 8 pounds 1 ounce and is 20-1/4 inches long. Here's Annie holding sister Katie.



Daddy, Mommy, Annie, and Baby Katie are all doing great!

PAJAMAS MEDIA HEALTH CARE FORUM – THE VIDEOS

Pajamas Media TV has produced a series of short (8-10 min) videos on the healthcare debate now before Congress. In no particular order, here they are:

- How to defeat Obama’s healthcare program.

- A prescription for reform.

- What’s in the healthcare bill?

- A single-payer advocate’s view.

- Will healthcare reform impact people with rare diseases?

- Is healthcare a right?

They're well worth watching - thoughtful, and well done. In particular, I'd recommend the single-payer advocate video. Even though she starts poorly (in my view), it is much more interesting when the subject turns to overhead (administrative) costs.

RUNNING A STATE THE RIGHT WAY

Glenn Reynolds (of Instapundit) talks to Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. It's long, but worthwhile.

DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO

It’s much easier to raise taxes if you don’t pay them.

Taxes are for little people.

A RATIONALE FOR SMALL GOVERNMENT

Mark Steyn: [B]ig government more or less guarantees rule by creeps and misfits. It's just a question of how well they disguise it.

Government of the weird, by the weird, for the weird ...

TAKE THAT BOTTOM RUNG OFF THE LADDER

Welcome to the latest chapter of America's minimum-wage folly.

Those who press for a higher minimum wage often claim that making entry-level jobs more expensive won't reduce the number of entry-level jobs. Were the government to compel a 41 percent increase in the price of gasoline or movie tickets or steel, every rational observer would expect a drop in the demand for gasoline, movie tickets, or steel. Yet when it comes to the minimum wage, politicians and journalists somehow persuade themselves that making workers more expensive won't reduce the demand for workers.

The laws of supply and demand are not optional. Try as it might, Congress simply can't repeal them.

Minimum-wage laws don't make low- and unskilled Americans more productive, more experienced, or more desirable. They merely make them more expensive.

THE FINAL WORD ON "GATES-GATE"

Sometimes it isn't racism.

A black president, a black governor and a black mayor all agree with a black Harvard professor that he was racially profiled by a white-Latino-black police team headed by a cop who teaches courses in how to avoid racial profiling.

In the 1960s, the great English satirist Peter Simple invented the Prejudometer, which simply by being pointed at any individual could calculate degrees of racism to the nearest prejudon, "the internationally recognized scientific unit of racial prejudice."

Mr. Gates seems to go around with his Prejudometer permanently cranked up to 11.

It's arrogance - and stupidity.

THE WEST’S PROBLEM

Why poor countries won’t commit to binding emissions cuts.

[T]here is a perfectly good reason developing countries are unwilling to act on climate change: What they are being asked to do is more awful than climate change’s implications–even if one accepts all the alarmist predictions.

Rather than engage with the issues, eco-pundits are grasping for all kinds of fanciful pseudo-scientific theories to explain why the idea of binding emissions cuts are leaving the rest of the world cold. But this psychologizing only exposes the inability of climate activists to take seriously the rational case for inaction.

[T]he choice for developing countries is between mass death due to the consequences of an overheated planet sometime in the distant future, and mass suicide due to imposed instant starvation right now. Is it any surprise that they are reluctant to jump on the global-warming bandwagon?

If and when climate change promises to claim more casualties than poverty and starvation, the world will begin heeding the eco-warrior calls. Until then, global warming is eco-warrior hot air.

Via Instapundit.

DISPARATE IMPACT

Thomas Sowell on "disparate impact":

Much of the backlog of cases in our over-burdened courts has been created by the courts themselves, with adventurous judicial "interpretations" of laws that leave a large gray area of uncertainty around even the most plainly written legislation.

Nowhere is this more true than in civil rights cases.

At the heart of much of this legal complexity and moral angst is a judge-made theory that a "disparate impact" of any job requirement on different groups is evidence of discrimination.

That is why courts split along ideological fault lines in cases like the New Haven firefighters' case, where the crucial facts are not even in dispute. The only real dispute is over whether a test is automatically biased if different groups pass it at different rates. Apparently the groups themselves cannot possibly be different, according to "disparate impact" theory. Sowell again:

It is not that judges are incapable of seeing through the intellectual flaw in the "disparate impact" dogma. But that dogma is too central to efforts at social engineering to be given up for the sake of mere logic or facts.

Life isn't fair. Deal with it.

THE “GATES-GATE” AFFAIR

After a week of reporting and commenting (here and here), it seems to me that this is just another case of the liberal “elite” insisting that the rules don’t apply to themselves, and that anyone daring to think otherwise is de facto racist, homophobe, redneck, christianist, (insert your own term of approbation).

Note the posturing from Lawrence Bobo (W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University) and close friend of Henry Louis “Skip” Gates:

Skip is one of the most readily recognized black men in America .....

Well, um, let’s see. By Lawrence Bobo, perhaps ... but for me, the following come to mind more easily: Barack Obama (President), Colin Powell (retired Army general), Walter Williams (economist & columnist), Thomas Sowell (economist & columnist), Jesse Jackson (civil rights advocate), Al Sharpton (civil rights advocate), Roland Burris (Illinois senator), Juan Williams (NPR correspondent and Fox commentator), J. C. Watts (former congressman from Oklahoma), Andrew Young (former UN ambassador), Douglas Wilder (former Virginia governor), Michael Steele (RNC national chairman), Clarence Thomas (Supreme Court justice), Armstrong Williams (political commentator), Deval Patrick (governor of Massachusetts), Charles Rangel (New York congressman) ... and I’ve avoided sports, entertainment, and women.

Even before the charge were (sic) dropped Tuesday .... I knew in my bones that this situation was about the level of deference from a black male that a white cop expects. I say this even though I did not see the events themselves unfold.

In other words, “I don’t need no stinking facts.” ‘Nuff said.

It’s past time for former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “benign neglect”.

WEST VIRGINIA REVISITED

We took another overnight trip to West Virginia, intending to make Charleston and look around southand west. Never made it; there's just too much to see in an overnight trip. The first photo was taken just after entering WV along Interstate 64 near Lewisburg.



The next two pictures were taken at Sandstone Falls in the New River Gorge National River near Beckley. We spent several hours driving up and down the New river marveling at the sights. Sandstone falls is just one of many along the river.





This picture was taken at a dam along the Kanawha River near the campus of West Virginia University Institute of Technology. The power plant is a small, old - and still functioning - hydroelectric plant.

I didn't take pictures of the campus, which is unique to all the colleges I've ever visited. It's essentially a strip mall, with one side fronting the tracks for the coal trains that regularly pass by, and the other side backed against the mountains. In the middle sits a small community college dedicated to technology education.



This waterfall was along the Gauley River at a switchback in the road we were traveling.



West Virginia is a beautiful state, one of the prettiest I've ever visited in terms of density of scenic beauty per mile traveled. Nevertheless, it is a very poor state, as is seen in these photos. These are not campgrounds; they are peoples' homes, a mix of trailers and ramshackle cabins. The first is an area called "Boohoo Bottom" by the residents, which at least shows some sense of humor ....



"Memory Lane" - several trailers, and just down the road, a rather nice house that looked more like a medieval castle than a home.



The combination of beauty and poverty reminded me of an article I read several weeks ago. Christina Davidson of Atlantic Monthly visited Pocahontas County for a “Recession Road Trip,” and wrote, “Taking Comfort in Small Joys.”

We don't have foreclosure here because most people own their homes and have always owned their homes. Most people have jobs, and if they lose one, it probably didn't pay much anyway. We don't have much bankruptcy because most people know their limits. We don't have the expenses of people in the cities. I always sewed and made all my kids' clothes--I have five. I always cut their hair myself. We never bought what we didn't need. That's just how we live.

Don Surber was not amused.

This romantic nonsense about becoming more like West Virginia is dangerous to America.

“Valuable recession lessons can be gleaned from the West Virginia experience: Never buy what you don’t need,” wrote Davidson.

Nice.

Romantic.

Nuts.

If poverty is so good, then why do we have anti-poverty programs? Using her logic, we should have pro-poverty programs.

Although I'm sympathetic toward the Atlantic Monthly article - we could certainly learn about life and living from West Virginia - Surber is more nearly correct.

Far from being a pleasant experience, poverty leads to depression, anxiety and misery.

Which leads to my final photo - medical care in an impoverished state.

FROM THE EMAIL

Here’s a (forwarded) email I received recently. Supposedly it recounts the experience of a senior level Chrysler employee.

Monday morning I attended a breakfast meeting where the speaker/guest was David E. Cole, Chairman of the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), an Engineer with 40+ years automotive experience, full Professor at the Univ. of Michigan.

You have all likely heard CAR quoted, or referred to in the auto industry news lately. Mr. Cole told many stories of the difficulty of working with the folks that the Obama administration has sent to save the auto industry.

There have been many meetings where this very experienced automotive expert has had to listen to a newcomer to the industry; someone with zero manufacturing experience, zero auto industry experience, zero business experience, zero finance experience, zero engineering experience, and apparently zero brains tell them how to run their business.

Mr. Cole's favorite story is as follows: There was a team of Obama people speaking to Mr. Cole. They were explaining to Mr. Cole that the auto companies needed to make a car that was electric and liquid natural gas (LNG) with enough combined fuel to go 500 miles, so we wouldn't "need" so many gas stations (A whole other topic). They were quoting BTU's of LNG and battery life they had looked up on some website.

Mr. Cole explained that to do this you would need a trunk FULL of batteries, and a LNG tank as big as a car to make that happen. And that there were problems related to the laws of physics that prevented them from...

The Obama person interrupted and said (quoting): "These laws of physics? Whose rules are those? We need to change that (while others wrote down the name of the law so they could look it up). We have the Congress, and the administration. We can repeal that law, amend it, or use an executive order to get rid of that problem. That's why we are here, to fix these sort of issues."

The contents of the email are almost certainly fabricated (I didn’t check Snopes) but given the Obama administration’s demonstrated competence, it wouldn’t surprise me if it were true.

FUN WITH NUMBERS

In a post on basic math skills and the ability to understand current events, Tom Blumer is convinced many of today's high school — and college — graduates don't have them. Here is an example from recent news:

Problem: President Obama claims that his health care plan will cost $1 trillion over 10 years while reducing the number of Americans without health insurance from 46 million to 30 million. If all of this comes to pass, how much will taxpayers shell out for the average newly insured person per year, even if the expected drop in the number of uninsured occurs immediately?

Answer: $6,250 ($1 trillion ÷ 10 ÷ the 16 million alleged reduction in the uninsured).

Blumer asks some interesting questions based on the numbers:

[H]ealth insurance costs are high, but any pre-Medicare single person without major health issues should be able to get gold-plated coverage for far less than $6,250. The result also implies that the government will be shelling out an absurd $25,000 for a family of four. Where is all that money going to go? And how in the world can the Obama plan claim to be reducing costs?

This is one example of four; taken together, they are an indictment of ... something. The Obama administration? Literacy? Math skills? Critical thinking? Journalism? Common sense? All of the above?

Read Blumer’s post (and the following comments) and decide for yourself.

BADLY WOUNDED

About two weeks ago, on July 9, I posted the Obama Approval Index showing President Obama's approval ratings since his inauguration. Here's today's index from Rasmussen Reports.



On July 9, Obama's approval index had just gone negative; today it crossed the double-digit mark. Moreover, his popularity with likely voters has gone below 50%. (49% approve; 51% disapprove).



The shift toward disapproval appears to continue with those voters strongly approving President Obama's performance becoming less approving; those who are somewhat approving becoming somewhat disapproving; and so on.

The middle, those likely voters not holding a strong opinion, remains about a third of the survey population, but is showing evidence of a slight decline as attitudes harden. Since the inauguration, strong approvals have declined from 44% to 29%, a 15 point drop, while strong disapprovals have risen from 16% to 40%, a 24 point gain.

The Obama administration is in trouble.

DUH!

As a decision-making aid, PowerPoint is a poor tool.

And the sun rises in the east ....