You've seen her on Youtube! From Larry Kudlow on today's Corner:
It's worth noting that Hillary Clinton doesn't want corporations to pay any taxes at all-not a single penny. Hillary plans on confiscating their profits altogether! (In our CNBC interview Friday night, P.J. O'Rourke referred to Mrs. Clinton as "Hugo Chavez in a pantsuit.")
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
UT and Google Partner Up
From my Alma Mater's press release:
The University of Texas at Austin has become the newest partner in a broad book digitization project with Google.
The partnership between the University of Texas Libraries and Google is part of the Google Books Library Project, a project started in December 2004, initially to digitize books drawn from the libraries of the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University and the New York Public Library.
In the course of the multi-year project, Google will digitize at least one million volumes from the University of Texas Libraries’ collections....
The University of Texas at Austin has become the newest partner in a broad book digitization project with Google.
The partnership between the University of Texas Libraries and Google is part of the Google Books Library Project, a project started in December 2004, initially to digitize books drawn from the libraries of the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, Oxford University and the New York Public Library.
In the course of the multi-year project, Google will digitize at least one million volumes from the University of Texas Libraries’ collections....
Monday, January 29, 2007
Reagan's Free Speech Legacy
Was just listening to a podcast of Michael Medved on the effort to bring back the "fairness doctrine." I'm sure it's not an original thought, but Reagan's greatest legacy, after the ruination of Communism, may have been the removal of the "fairness doctrine." I loved the battering of the air traffic controller's union, but what a legacy that was.
Political speech has never been freer than today and in spite of the current state of the Right's political position, I would never want it to change. If we regulate the radio and FoxNews, which is what they are really after here, how long before venues like this or any of those listed on the right side of this webpage are similarly regulated?
Let the marketplace of ideas work itself out. Even Air America found additional funding, even if Mr. Franken is leaving to test the waters in Minnesota. What does Congressman Hinchey fear?
Political speech has never been freer than today and in spite of the current state of the Right's political position, I would never want it to change. If we regulate the radio and FoxNews, which is what they are really after here, how long before venues like this or any of those listed on the right side of this webpage are similarly regulated?
Let the marketplace of ideas work itself out. Even Air America found additional funding, even if Mr. Franken is leaving to test the waters in Minnesota. What does Congressman Hinchey fear?
MORE BLACK HELICOPTERS...
Ok, I’m not sold on the whole North American Union thing (not even close) and cannot abide the New World Order nutters, but this does bug me a bit.
It does appear that an affiliate of Macquarie did acquire a bunch of those Texas and Oklahoma newspapers. It also appears that a Macquarie entity is involved with Cintra, the entity involved in the Trans-Texas toll road/corridor. It just smells bad. What if Wal-Mart were to buy all the entities owning publications spewing bile at them? I’d hate that, too. The fact that they are foreign entities makes it all the more uncomfortable.
In light of Kelo, I'm a bit concerned about where all this is going. 500,00 acres?
The only article I could find today is at WND. Read if you like but watch out for those helicopters.
It does appear that an affiliate of Macquarie did acquire a bunch of those Texas and Oklahoma newspapers. It also appears that a Macquarie entity is involved with Cintra, the entity involved in the Trans-Texas toll road/corridor. It just smells bad. What if Wal-Mart were to buy all the entities owning publications spewing bile at them? I’d hate that, too. The fact that they are foreign entities makes it all the more uncomfortable.
In light of Kelo, I'm a bit concerned about where all this is going. 500,00 acres?
The only article I could find today is at WND. Read if you like but watch out for those helicopters.
More on the Unnamed Health Insurance Issue
Jeff Jacoby makes a good start on the teaching needed on the subject in today’s JWR. As in education, we need to let the market back in to the world of medicine. I know it sounds simplistic, but it works every where else. Jacoby mentions the WWII point I made last week but the more interesting discussion involve the common thought that because medicine has become so high tech that the costs must soar:
Why is health insurance so expensive? .... The revolution in cardiac care, the myriad new drugs, the invention of CAT scanners and MRIs, the ability to transplant organs — these and so many other lifesaving medical miracles didn't come cheap. It stands to reason that insurance covering the cost of such miracles doesn't come cheap either.
But wait — [why does] it stand to reason? Information technology has exploded in recent decades too, yet computers have never been as affordable as they are now. Agriculture is far more advanced, and the quality and variety of food available to consumers far greater, than they were 50 years ago, yet the real cost of food has plummeted. The price of a primitive color television in 1954 was equal to three months' wages for an average American worker; today that worker gets a sparkling picture on a 25-inch screen for just three days of work.
"Why is it," asks David Gratzer, a physician and scholar at the Manhattan Institute, "that in every other field where enormous technological strides have been made, total costs have fallen over time, but in health care they have increased?" The answer, he writes in The Cure, a lively and engrossing new book on the American health care mess, is simple: Health care costs so much because most of us pay so little for it. And we pay so little — out-of-pocket expenses amount to just 14 cents of every health dollar spent in this country — because a third party nearly always picks up the tab. For most working Americans, that third party is an insurance company paid by their employers.....
Why does it matter whether Americans pay for medical care directly or let insurers cover their bills? Because thrift and price awareness usually go out the window when we're spending other people's money. Under the present setup, most Americans have little incentive to be economical consumers of health care. As a result, health care expenditures — and insurance premiums — have been racing ahead at three and four times the rate of inflation.
Why is health insurance so expensive? .... The revolution in cardiac care, the myriad new drugs, the invention of CAT scanners and MRIs, the ability to transplant organs — these and so many other lifesaving medical miracles didn't come cheap. It stands to reason that insurance covering the cost of such miracles doesn't come cheap either.
But wait — [why does] it stand to reason? Information technology has exploded in recent decades too, yet computers have never been as affordable as they are now. Agriculture is far more advanced, and the quality and variety of food available to consumers far greater, than they were 50 years ago, yet the real cost of food has plummeted. The price of a primitive color television in 1954 was equal to three months' wages for an average American worker; today that worker gets a sparkling picture on a 25-inch screen for just three days of work.
"Why is it," asks David Gratzer, a physician and scholar at the Manhattan Institute, "that in every other field where enormous technological strides have been made, total costs have fallen over time, but in health care they have increased?" The answer, he writes in The Cure, a lively and engrossing new book on the American health care mess, is simple: Health care costs so much because most of us pay so little for it. And we pay so little — out-of-pocket expenses amount to just 14 cents of every health dollar spent in this country — because a third party nearly always picks up the tab. For most working Americans, that third party is an insurance company paid by their employers.....
Why does it matter whether Americans pay for medical care directly or let insurers cover their bills? Because thrift and price awareness usually go out the window when we're spending other people's money. Under the present setup, most Americans have little incentive to be economical consumers of health care. As a result, health care expenditures — and insurance premiums — have been racing ahead at three and four times the rate of inflation.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Scooter starting to see black helicopters?
I'm starting to get a bad feeling about the toll roads. An Aussie company partners with the Spanish company (Citra [sp?] building the first of the toll roads) and then the Aussie company buys twenty Texas newspapers along the toll road corridor. Of course, these were papers editorializing against the the toll roads.
I've got to look for some independent articles/sources rather than the scary source from which I learned this; but if true, it's ugly.
I've got to look for some independent articles/sources rather than the scary source from which I learned this; but if true, it's ugly.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Tried to move SSG to the new format....
but got a message that only my scooterblog could be moved. Said the original creator had to do the moving...
Moving scooterblog was easy...just had to set up a google account.
Moving scooterblog was easy...just had to set up a google account.
More on the Health Insurance Plan with No Name (can you hear the crickets chirping?)
GWB makes the proposal and it’s DOA. But per Mike Franc at HumanEvents:
To [Dick] Armey [(R.-Tex.)] and [Pete] Stark [(D.-Calif.)]-, the solution [in 1999] was obvious: Use the tax code to help increase [health insurance] coverage. "We think Congress should create a new refundable tax credit to enable all Americans to buy decent health coverage." Other liberals agreed. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D.-Calif.), and Reps. Barney Frank (D.-Mass.) and Jim McDermott (D.-Wash.) sponsored legislation creating tax credits or deductions for individuals to purchase health coverage.
...
Stark refused to even hold hearings on it in the health subcommittee he chairs, saying the plan was "designed for disaster." Rep. Charles Rangel (D.-N.Y.), dismissed it as "a dangerous policy that … shifts cost and risk from employers to employees."
This knee-jerk opposition prompted some journalists to scold Democrats. The Post’s Steve Pearlstein noted that the plan "actually involves raising taxes on the rich and lavishly insured and giving the money to the working poor and the uninsured...."
To [Dick] Armey [(R.-Tex.)] and [Pete] Stark [(D.-Calif.)]-, the solution [in 1999] was obvious: Use the tax code to help increase [health insurance] coverage. "We think Congress should create a new refundable tax credit to enable all Americans to buy decent health coverage." Other liberals agreed. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D.-Calif.), and Reps. Barney Frank (D.-Mass.) and Jim McDermott (D.-Wash.) sponsored legislation creating tax credits or deductions for individuals to purchase health coverage.
...
Stark refused to even hold hearings on it in the health subcommittee he chairs, saying the plan was "designed for disaster." Rep. Charles Rangel (D.-N.Y.), dismissed it as "a dangerous policy that … shifts cost and risk from employers to employees."
This knee-jerk opposition prompted some journalists to scold Democrats. The Post’s Steve Pearlstein noted that the plan "actually involves raising taxes on the rich and lavishly insured and giving the money to the working poor and the uninsured...."
Simple Health Insurance Plan needs better explanation (Does it even have a Name yet?)
How many people know that employer funded health insurance was the market’s not so great response to FDR’s wage freeze (itself obviously grossly anti-market)? Amity Schlaes has a pretty good article today at bloomberg.com explaining how this would work but this project is going to take a LOT of selling. I mentioned it to a medical technician about to give me an MRI a year and a half ago and he was dumbfounded, having assumed that this was the way things HAVE ALWAYS BEEN DONE.
Ms. Schlaes:
Back in the 1930s, Congress and President Franklin Roosevelt created Social Security over corporate protests. A national system of payment for health care seemed next. (In 1945 Harry Truman would go around talking about "the right to adequate medical care.'')
Terrified employer raced to preempt FDR and Truman by proving they could handle health themselves. They contracted with Blue Cross and Blue Shield to provide benefits for employee pools. The tax treatment came last -- in fact no one knew for a while whether companies really could claim the insurance deduction.
But World War II made the new arrangement seem doubly logical. Congress imposed an "excess'' profits tax of as much as 90 percent and froze wages. Paying for health insurance was a way to reduce tax bills and keep workers, who were suddenly scarce. Unions were pleased. By 1945, 32 million Americans were in health-insurance programs, many sponsored by companies, up from 12 million to 13 million just five years before.
Bush has been awful at marketing his domestic agenda except for the early tax breaks, No Child Left Behind (and that was as much Kennedy’s doing as the POTU) and Medicare Part whatever.
I fear that she’s right and that these reforms will only begin to take root now while we most scratch our heads and try to think things through. For those of us who have decent employer provided coverage, we will be hard-pressed to allow any monkeying with it.
She concludes:
But if the Democratic leadership is already rejecting the Bush idea, is it still worth thinking about? The answer is yes. Parties come up with some of their best ideas when they are down -- ideas that tend to become law five or 10 years later.
Several other Bush proposals have been fakes -- programs that called themselves free market but actually extend the role of government, such as the Medicare Part D prescription-drug plan.
The standard-deduction plan, by contrast, truly is free market and anti-Washington. Though it may have come at the wrong time, this increase is one all can endorse -- even the tax warriors.
This is going to be a hard but necessary sell. First they need a great acronym.
Ms. Schlaes:
Back in the 1930s, Congress and President Franklin Roosevelt created Social Security over corporate protests. A national system of payment for health care seemed next. (In 1945 Harry Truman would go around talking about "the right to adequate medical care.'')
Terrified employer raced to preempt FDR and Truman by proving they could handle health themselves. They contracted with Blue Cross and Blue Shield to provide benefits for employee pools. The tax treatment came last -- in fact no one knew for a while whether companies really could claim the insurance deduction.
But World War II made the new arrangement seem doubly logical. Congress imposed an "excess'' profits tax of as much as 90 percent and froze wages. Paying for health insurance was a way to reduce tax bills and keep workers, who were suddenly scarce. Unions were pleased. By 1945, 32 million Americans were in health-insurance programs, many sponsored by companies, up from 12 million to 13 million just five years before.
Bush has been awful at marketing his domestic agenda except for the early tax breaks, No Child Left Behind (and that was as much Kennedy’s doing as the POTU) and Medicare Part whatever.
I fear that she’s right and that these reforms will only begin to take root now while we most scratch our heads and try to think things through. For those of us who have decent employer provided coverage, we will be hard-pressed to allow any monkeying with it.
She concludes:
But if the Democratic leadership is already rejecting the Bush idea, is it still worth thinking about? The answer is yes. Parties come up with some of their best ideas when they are down -- ideas that tend to become law five or 10 years later.
Several other Bush proposals have been fakes -- programs that called themselves free market but actually extend the role of government, such as the Medicare Part D prescription-drug plan.
The standard-deduction plan, by contrast, truly is free market and anti-Washington. Though it may have come at the wrong time, this increase is one all can endorse -- even the tax warriors.
This is going to be a hard but necessary sell. First they need a great acronym.
Krauthammer Joins Scooter's Chorus on Ethanol
In today's JWR, Dr. K echoes my earlier post and Robert Samuelson's column from earlier this week:
This is nonsense. As my colleague Robert J. Samuelson demonstrated this week, biofuels will barely keep up with the increase in gasoline demand over time. They are a huge government bet with goals and mandates and subsidies that will not cure our oil dependence or even make a significant dent in it.
...
So much easier to say ethanol. That it will do farcically little is beside the point. Our debates about oil consumption, energy dependence and global warming are not meant to be serious. They are meant for show.
This is nonsense. As my colleague Robert J. Samuelson demonstrated this week, biofuels will barely keep up with the increase in gasoline demand over time. They are a huge government bet with goals and mandates and subsidies that will not cure our oil dependence or even make a significant dent in it.
...
So much easier to say ethanol. That it will do farcically little is beside the point. Our debates about oil consumption, energy dependence and global warming are not meant to be serious. They are meant for show.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Friday, January 19, 2007
Embracing the Suck
The best movie example I’ve ever seen of that concept is Tom Berenger’s character in Oliver Stone’s Platoon "encouraging" a wounded soldier to, "Shut up and Take the Pain!"
Obama’s conversion from Islam
If Obama converted to United Church Christ from Islam, isn’t that punishable by death in most of the Muslim world? Especially given that the UCC is way out in front of the Episcopal Church on most issues that would particularly upset a more radical Wahhabi type?
Thursday, January 18, 2007
California Citrus Damage exacerbated by EPA
In today's TCSDaily's article by Dr. Henry I. Miller entitled "Feds Freeze Out Antidote, Costing Billions", we see once again why the scariest words in the US remain, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
A couple of paragraphs:
In the early 1980's scientists at the University of California and in industry devised a new approach to limiting frost damage. They knew that a harmless bacterium which normally lives on many plants contains an "ice nucleation" protein that promotes frost damage. Therefore, they sought to produce a variant of the bacterium that lacked the ice-nucleation protein, reasoning that spraying this variant bacterium (dubbed "ice-minus") on plants might prevent frost damage by displacing the common, ice-promoting kind. Using very precise biotechnology techniques called "gene splicing," the researchers removed the gene for the ice nucleation protein and planned field tests with ice-minus bacteria.
Then the government stepped in, and that was the beginning of the end.
What else do you need to know? (But read the whole thing if only for the science.)
A couple of paragraphs:
In the early 1980's scientists at the University of California and in industry devised a new approach to limiting frost damage. They knew that a harmless bacterium which normally lives on many plants contains an "ice nucleation" protein that promotes frost damage. Therefore, they sought to produce a variant of the bacterium that lacked the ice-nucleation protein, reasoning that spraying this variant bacterium (dubbed "ice-minus") on plants might prevent frost damage by displacing the common, ice-promoting kind. Using very precise biotechnology techniques called "gene splicing," the researchers removed the gene for the ice nucleation protein and planned field tests with ice-minus bacteria.
Then the government stepped in, and that was the beginning of the end.
What else do you need to know? (But read the whole thing if only for the science.)
Monday, January 15, 2007
The new F-35 from Lockheed lets the fighter pilot be more fighter than pilot
This is very cool. From today's NRO:
On Wednesday afternoon, a few hours after testing the F-35, Beesley explained why the new nine-G, Mach 1.6 (just over 1,200 miles per hour) fighter is unlike anything ever flown.
"I’ve never felt any airplane that had better performance coming off the ground," Beesley tells National Review Online. "I had a very good idea of how I would climb out, but [because the single Pratt and Whitney F135 engine generates more thrust than any fighter engine ever built] I had to keep pulling the nose up. I was thinking, ‘this is interesting.’"
MORE FIGHTING THAN FLYING
In September, I talked with with Marine Lt. Col. Arthur "Turbo" Tomassetti. Tomassetti, who had flown the X-35 (the stripped-down experimental version of what would evolve into the current F-35) explained that, "Mission stuff — killing things and blowing things up — should be what is most challenging. You don’t need to complicate a pilot’s life by making the hardest part of his combat mission getting back aboard ship."
On Wednesday afternoon, a few hours after testing the F-35, Beesley explained why the new nine-G, Mach 1.6 (just over 1,200 miles per hour) fighter is unlike anything ever flown.
"I’ve never felt any airplane that had better performance coming off the ground," Beesley tells National Review Online. "I had a very good idea of how I would climb out, but [because the single Pratt and Whitney F135 engine generates more thrust than any fighter engine ever built] I had to keep pulling the nose up. I was thinking, ‘this is interesting.’"
MORE FIGHTING THAN FLYING
In September, I talked with with Marine Lt. Col. Arthur "Turbo" Tomassetti. Tomassetti, who had flown the X-35 (the stripped-down experimental version of what would evolve into the current F-35) explained that, "Mission stuff — killing things and blowing things up — should be what is most challenging. You don’t need to complicate a pilot’s life by making the hardest part of his combat mission getting back aboard ship."
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Firetrucks disturb Scooter's sleep....
From News8Austin:
A million-dollar new home under construction in Tarrytown was destroyed by fire early Thursday morning.
LOUD SIRENS for an hour straight...dogs in the 'hood (in honor of our new subtitle) went crazy.
A million-dollar new home under construction in Tarrytown was destroyed by fire early Thursday morning.
LOUD SIRENS for an hour straight...dogs in the 'hood (in honor of our new subtitle) went crazy.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Paul Greenberg
One of the things about the Internet, generally, and Jewish World Review, specifically, for which I’ll always be grateful: they introduced me to Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial writing, the editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Paul Greenberg.
Excerpts from today’s column:
Dear Ozark Correspondent,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear the newest euphemism in your part of the state for the now politically incorrect term, hillbilly: Ozark-American.
...
So are hillbillies the same as rednecks? Those categories may overlap, but they're certainly not the same. You gotta hand it to rednecks; they don't care who calls 'em rednecks. Indeed, the true redneck takes pride in the name, and it does beat all heck out of the more scholastic classification, Southern Yeomanry.
....
The least appealing may be the professional Southerner, aka the More Southern Than Thou variety. The species can often be found up North or on the fringes of the Old Confederacy. It seems that those most removed from the center of any ethnic group may be most insecure in their identity and most bent on exaggerating it. [Me: the professional Texan is so annoying that Bud Light dedicated a "Real Men of Genius" commercial to Mr. Way Too Proud of Texas Guy.] The way Austrians make the most fanatic German nationalists. Or American Jews the most fervent Zionists.
One of the best, funniest and warmest columists in America.
Excerpts from today’s column:
Dear Ozark Correspondent,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear the newest euphemism in your part of the state for the now politically incorrect term, hillbilly: Ozark-American.
...
So are hillbillies the same as rednecks? Those categories may overlap, but they're certainly not the same. You gotta hand it to rednecks; they don't care who calls 'em rednecks. Indeed, the true redneck takes pride in the name, and it does beat all heck out of the more scholastic classification, Southern Yeomanry.
....
The least appealing may be the professional Southerner, aka the More Southern Than Thou variety. The species can often be found up North or on the fringes of the Old Confederacy. It seems that those most removed from the center of any ethnic group may be most insecure in their identity and most bent on exaggerating it. [Me: the professional Texan is so annoying that Bud Light dedicated a "Real Men of Genius" commercial to Mr. Way Too Proud of Texas Guy.] The way Austrians make the most fanatic German nationalists. Or American Jews the most fervent Zionists.
One of the best, funniest and warmest columists in America.
My Morning Chill
From Mark Steyn at National Review:
There are ten million people in Moscow. Do you know how many of them are Muslim? Two and a half million. Or about a quarter of the population. The ethnic Russians are older; the Muslims are younger. The ethnic Russians are already in net population decline; the Muslim population in the country has increased by 40% in the last 15 years. Seven out of ten Russian pregnancies (according to some surveys) are aborted; in some Muslim communities, the fertility rate is ten babies per woman. Russian men have record rates of heart disease, liver disease, drug addiction and Aids; Muslims are the only guys in the country who aren’t face down in the vodka.
Faced with these trends, most experts extrapolate: thus, it’s generally accepted that by mid-century the Russian Federation will be majority Muslim. But you don’t really need to extrapolate when the future’s already checking in at reception. The Toronto Star (which is Canada’s biggest-selling newspaper and impeccably liberal) recently noted that by 2015 Muslims will make up a majority of Russia’s army.
More scary stuff....
There are ten million people in Moscow. Do you know how many of them are Muslim? Two and a half million. Or about a quarter of the population. The ethnic Russians are older; the Muslims are younger. The ethnic Russians are already in net population decline; the Muslim population in the country has increased by 40% in the last 15 years. Seven out of ten Russian pregnancies (according to some surveys) are aborted; in some Muslim communities, the fertility rate is ten babies per woman. Russian men have record rates of heart disease, liver disease, drug addiction and Aids; Muslims are the only guys in the country who aren’t face down in the vodka.
Faced with these trends, most experts extrapolate: thus, it’s generally accepted that by mid-century the Russian Federation will be majority Muslim. But you don’t really need to extrapolate when the future’s already checking in at reception. The Toronto Star (which is Canada’s biggest-selling newspaper and impeccably liberal) recently noted that by 2015 Muslims will make up a majority of Russia’s army.
More scary stuff....
Monday, January 08, 2007
Avian Flu or the commencement of the the 80th Texas Legislature???
KLBJ reports:
They've closed off most of Congress Avenue for the morning downtown -- along with all side streets between Colorado and Brazos streets. That's after dozens of birds were found dead in the area.
They've closed off most of Congress Avenue for the morning downtown -- along with all side streets between Colorado and Brazos streets. That's after dozens of birds were found dead in the area.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
