so sue me
One of the more novel aspects of our government is its division into three co-equal branches (remember, the guys who designed it were – for good reason – inherently distrustful of government and, accordingly, came up with a blueprint that is intentionally incapable of being effective and efficient unless threatened with imminent catastrophe).
This results in a structural incapacity that is facilitated by politicians who often lack the brains or testicles to tackle big issues.
Not the most elegant of solutions, but effective nonetheless.
Let’s apply this to the current dilemma over climate heating.
Only 1% of the scientists in the world do not accept the relevant findings of climate science. But this 99% majority is not mirrored in the galactically void minds of elected officialdom, the media, or the teabagging masses yearning to be free.
Ergo, this is one of those issues that is apt to be substantially resolved in places that have rules and deadlines and tend to make decisions based on the weight of evidence and other troublesome metrics.
Good thing, too.
We have until 2015 (at the latest) to cap GHG emissions globally – and then wind them back – or the die may be cast for the end of the human genome project:
Sue the f***ers!
All of them!
And that mental Lilliputian, Glenn Beck, just for good measure!
parallel looniverse
I am an equal opportunity offender – as happy to take aim at the deficiencies of the left as I am at the excesses of the right – and vice versa. Each often warrants a full compliment of cynicism and an extra helping of disdain. Fortunately, both ends of the political spectrum are target rich environments. Here’s what I mean . . .
Progressives are often quick to recognize important inconsistencies and inequities in the world. They are, more often than not, the driving force behind measures aimed at moral issues like discrimination and inequality, public policy issues like health care and climate heating, and personal economic issues like minimum wage and retirement. But they are also apt to identify an issue and then completely misidentify its cause – which, more often than not, results in solutions that camouflage the underlying problems – and never fully resolves them.
Traditionalists (I hesitate identifying them as conservatives because most of them are simply articulating variations on a theme premised on a large, intrusive, and costly bureaucracy – funded by deficits, and debt, and inflation) are the canaries in the national security coal mine and masters of the status quo. They’ve never met a conspiracy that isn’t plausible (especially if it involves a threat that can be, even tentatively, linked to a foreign source), never met a criminal not deserving of life (with the possibility of execution for good behavior), and never read a passage in the bible that isn’t literally true. Their world does not allow for uncertainty or doubt because an invisible, all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful cosmic wizard (with whom they have an intimate personal relationship and who intercedes in the minutiae of their daily lives) is on their side. They are always right . . . regardless of the facts.
A couple of applied examples of these observations:
Climate Change. Those who (rightly) see climate heating as the most significant existential threat facing the world in the history of the human species are baffled that anyone has a different opinion. This generally prompts a lot of mea culpa naval gazing aimed at identifying the cause of this otherwise inexplicable disconnect, and its political implications and consequences.
It’s the media’s fault – they are pandering to their fossil industry advertisers and/or inflating the (false) validity of deniers and delayers by giving them equal ink and air time. It’s human nature – we are genetically and/or culturally programmed to avoid the unpleasant implications of the future and, instead, see only a fantasized destination filled with endless pleasures. Or my favorite, it’s the result of an aversion to science – a fundamental ignorance that belies an inability to grasp basic principles of chemistry and physics.
It is hard to make heads or tails out of a world constructed of such infinite complexity. Where to start? Nationalize the media and force the public to accept a daily diet of science facts? Go on a crash course to reprogram the human race culturally and genetically? Fix education? Ban religion and other iterations of mystical fantasy? May as well just cut the soles off your shoes, climb a tree, and learn to play the flute!
Like most other issues, this is just not that hard. We’ve known for decades that pumping bad stuff into the air changes atmospheric chemistry and results in a variety of negative outcomes. Many of these effects are well-documented – like acid rain, increases in asthma, and increases in cancer and other diseases. But, regardless of political orientation, most policy wonks come to the most inane conclusions. Carbon sequestration for “clean coal”, for example. If ever there was a Rube Goldberg solution, this one has to take first prize.
Let’s apply Occam’s Law of Parsimony: stop using fossil fuels. Phase them out over, say, ten years. Make them illegal – all of them. Force the economy to switch to alternative energy. It will – simply because it won’t have a choice. If you insist on adding a government catalyst, increase the patent protection period on new energy technologies to 100 years – and watch the mutants who brought us hedge funds and derivatives stampede down Wall Street to place their bets in the new Patent Futures market.
In other words, don’t try to change human nature – take advantage of it. Harness the power of shameless greed to the benefit of the planet’s future. Give the robber barons a new and better opportunity to loot and pillage. They’ll abandon their carbon addictions in a New York minute for a shot at the new high. It’s in their nature. They won’t be able to resist.
Education. If public education was a product like an automobile or a microwave oven, we’d have to increase the size of the Court system by an exponential factor just to handle the consumer fraud and liability claims.
The progressive response to a public education system that is beyond redemption is, generally, twofold. First, they send their kids to private schools. Second, they pump more money into a system that is inherently irrational and dysfunctional. It’s the traditional way the government works – if a program doesn’t work, spend more money on it.
The traditionalist response is not much different. They have a personal interest in maintaining the status quo because (a) they send their kids to private schools and don’t want them to have to compete (or associate) with the progeny of common folks (which would inevitably occur if the entire education market was privatized and school admissions were based on academic merit), or (b) they are the plumber or beautician sitting on the local school board and are addicted to the sense of power and self-esteem that comes with being an indispensable watchdog of the community’s interest.
The recent flap over Obama’s “stay in school” pep talk is illustrative. Some of the stupendously vapid plumbers and beauticians who sit on local school boards from coast-to-coast – egged on by the so-called conservatives on the right wing lunatic fringe of the media – rallied to protect America’s youth from the potential despair that would inevitably result from listening to the words of a freed slave who managed to make something of himself.
This is all bulltinky. It makes no more sense for the gummint to own education as it does for the gummint to own General Motors (ooops!). There’s a difference between providing access to education and providing the education itself. The first is what the government should do – provide equal access to affordable education. The second is what is at the heart of the massive ignorance about basic science (and history, and math, and geography . . .) in this country.
Why? Also very simple. Any time the government creates a program it also invests one or more constituencies with one or more special interests. The constituencies that dominate the content and direction of education in the US are not the consumers of educational services – rather, the government serves the institutional interests of teachers and schools and publishers and the rest. Several decades ago, Milton Friedman argued eloquently for the replacement of the current public school miasma with a voucher-funded, student-centric, totally privatized system. It’s long overdue.
The take away: government never solves problems – it only manages them. If you want to imbue a problem with immortality, aim a government program at it. If you want to solve a problem, turn it into a opportunity in which quality results become the distinguishing factors in the eyes of the consumer – and in which the consumer holds the important cards.
healthcare redux
I am not at all enthusiastic about the portents for a rational public policy response to what is, by any objective analysis, an emergent – and growing – political issue. As a matter of philosophical preference, I would much prefer a market-based solution. Having said that, the market has failed – massively – to minimally, let alone comprehensively, address even the most basic of health-related issues. By way of example, we have the technological means to digitize and standardize medical records – and yet the entire health care industry, from doctor and hospital record-keeping to insurance company billing, is operating in the dark ages.
In many other industries, there are ongoing efforts to eliminate waste and inefficiency – and, generally, these efforts result in higher quality and lower prices. My first cell phone – which was permanently mounted in my car – cost around $900. I paid roaming charges, long distance charges – and a ludicrous (by today’s standards) per-minute base rate for local (within the same area code) calls. My first monthly bill was north of $500. Today I get a lot more service from my Crackberry – for a lot less money.
I can apply the same model to computers. The first computer I operated was an IBM 360 Model 40. It filled the first floor of an office building, had a whopping 144 kb memory, and disc drives (this is when DOS was really DOS) that required a semi-annual hernia waiver to move. We had modems the size of refrigerators that transmitted at teletype baud rates – and all of this miraculous stuff costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. In fact, the first “portable” terminal I used was packed in a fiberglass suitcase and weighed close to 100 pounds. I used to buy a ticket for it and strap it into the seat next to me when flying to a sales call. The stupid thing cost around $10,000 and hardly ever worked. Today, my laptop – around $1,200 at Costco – is hundreds of times more powerful than all of that ancient (circa 1970) equipment.
There are other models that run contrary to these examples. The office space in which that old IBM clunker was housed rented at $6.00 per square foot. Today it’s close to $25.00 psf. And the BMW 2002 tii that I bought for around $4,500 in 1971 would, comparably, sell for nine or ten times that today.
And then there’s health insurance. I started a business in the early 1980s. One of the first things that I did was arrange for a small group health insurance plan for me, my partners, and our handful of employees. It covered everything. Well care. Sick care. Hospitalization. X-rays and labs. Medication. Dental. Eyeglasses. It even came with a life insurance policy. There was a modest deductible that was capped at some infernally low amount. The paperwork amounted to two simple forms – one that had to be filled out at the beginning of every year on the first visit to a doctor – one page, front and back. And another that was half a page – just enough room for some very basic information (name, policy number, physician’s name and address, a few lines of description for whatever the issue was, and an amount to be paid). My family coverage (two adults, three kids) cost less than $300 per month for the works. And it was accepted by every doctor and every hospital I ever encountered while I had it.
Today, a comprehensive policy would be four or five times that – probably more – and would likely not provide anywhere near the same coverage (in New Jersey, for example, thanks to the miracle of incestuous state regulation, medication coverage can’t exceed 50% and is further capped at some inanely low annual maximum).
All this is just by way of introduction. What I really want to do is ask two relatively straightforward questions.
First, what, from a consumer’s perspective, is the value proposition of the health insurance industry? I’m sure industry spokespeople have a litany of answers – all of which are based on the same kind of actuarial logic that makes casualty or life insurance make sense. But does the same value proposition apply to health insurance? Put another way, what value (again, from the consumer’s perspective) do health insurance companies actually add to the health care process? They clearly don’t add efficiency, cut waste, or contain costs. What is their value proposition to the health care consumer?
Second, why do we have government funded, government run, insurance plans for banks (FDIC), stock brokerages (SIPC), health care for retirees (Medicare) and veterans (VA) – and even potentially flooded properties – all delivered in a single payer context – but that isn’t socialism, or nazism, or part of a liberal conspiracy to hand the treasury over to the Chinese or the Muslins or some as yet unidentified third round African draft choice? We just blew a few trillion bucks paying off the bad bets of the geniuses in our financial services industry – and bailing out the boneheads in the auto industry – but when it comes down to regular check-ups and flu shots and sick care for the average citizen, it becomes part of some alien invasion conspiracy. Why?
Answer those questions honestly and objectively. Put your preconceptions aside. The answer could be to privatize everything – jettison the FDIC, dump the flood insurance program, turn Medicare over to Goldman Sachs and Social Security over to Morgan Stanley, and so on. That wouldn’t necessarily get the government off the hook because when those guys screw up – as they invariably will (giving money to a banker is like giving heroin to an addict) – the government will still be holding the bag. But if it makes you feel better to think that the law of gravity can be broken, have at it. On the other hand, if you think that the gummint can do a super swell job running things – give it your best shot. The “public option” may wind up looking like FEMA or the Army Corp of Engineers or the IRS or the Pentagon. I’m sure there’s an agency or two or three that you can think of – the EPA, the FDA . . . the choices are almost limitless – that is the exception that proves the rule.
I haven’t changed my earlier solution, mind you. I’m just trying to spark a discussion that doesn’t involve the kind of abject stupidity the nine twelvers – or the single payers (particularly the dim bulbs who think that’s a dating service for Pay Pal members) – have been tossing around.
Just be consistent.
clash of the eliterati
Poe’s Law:
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won’t mistake for the real thing.
And so it goes. A few thousand ersatz conservative vaporheads gather in DC, only to find themselves as the next laugh line on Letterman and the illustration in Wiki under “Fuqtard”. Not only were they the joke, but the joke was on them, too. Another exercise in useful idiocy.
Oh and then there’s the denial by the deniers who tried to deny that they denied any part of the denial . . . a further adventure in the anals of the Anti Science Society (ASS), the members of which must be found to be contaminated with – or carriers of – Anti Science Syndrome which, according to Joe Romm, can be diagnosed in the following way:
If you suspect someone of ASS, look for the repeated use of the following phrases:
- Medieval Warm Period
- Hockey Stick
- Michael Mann
- The climate is always changing
- Alarmist
- Hoax
- Temperature rises precede rises in carbon dioxide
- Pacific Decadal Oscillation
- Water vapor
- Sunspots
- Cosmic rays
- Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark
- Ice Age was predicted in the 1970s
- Global cooling
Individually, some of these words and phrases are quite useful and indeed are commonly used by both scientists and non-scientists who are not anti-science. But the use of more than half of these in a single speech or article is pretty much a definitive diagnosis of ASS.
When someone repeats virtually all of those phrases, along with multiple references to Al Gore, they are wholly a victim of ASS — in scientific circles they are referred to as ASS-wholes.
Romm, gentleman that he is, neglected to mention that poking fun at ASS-wholes is known as “ASS-play”.
Some of you already know that. But a few may need to take Yoga lessons from my friend cutshot so that you can assume the same anatomically impossible positions he’s so deftly mastered.
we have a whiner!
It’s taken much less time than I thought it would, but our first S-F-B Award* winner has emerged!
cutshot@sbcglobal.net writes:
Well, unreal2r, how’s the view, now that you have your head where it belongs? I’ve always suspected that was the case with you liberal morons!
Thirty minutes later (obviously suffering from a terminal case of bloviator’s remorse – or precocious senility) he posts:
Well, unreal2r, how’s the view, now that you have your head where it belongs? I can see why you have such a myopic view of politics. It must be dark in there!
Good News/Bad News, cutshot . . .
Bad News: I’ve got your IP address.
Good News: Nurse Ratchet will be around soon with your meds and a fresh Depend (clearly, that’s the closest you get to the deep end of things).
*Shit-For-Brains
wingnuts over washington
The last time I saw a “movement” like this was during the preparation for a colonoscopy.
Then again, not satisfied with photoshopped placards stalinizing and nazifying Obama – or the fact that only the escaped inmates from the asylum had heeded the call to arms – the zipperheads tried to goebbelsize a photo to make the event look even bigger than the last KKK bake sale.
exposed: the icing on the (frozen) cake
It’s no longer necessary to dig around for hard-to-find facts and theories to explain how tenured socialist academicians have taken over all of science. These guys blow the cover off the whole, vast, left-wing conspiracy aimed at redistributing the wealth of the west to sub-Saharan Africa, re-programming the minds of our youth, and enslaving the white race:
http://denialdepot.blogspot.com/2009/09/arctic-sea-ice-staggering-growth.html
Be sure to read the comments – especially the ones that focus on the real causes of climate heating – like “aliens creating large amounts of heat by manipulating the local cosmic plasma fluxes“.
The truth is out there . . . in Area 51!
it’s only a “theory”
After seeing some of the photos of Glenn Beck’s “Million Airhead March” on Washington, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that a British filmmaker was having a problem finding a US distributor for a new title about the life of Charles Darwin. Somebody should tell the luftmenschen at Faux News that gravitation is only a theory, too . . . before they all float rapturously away . . . Then again, there’s this aptly named release that seems to have made it through the censors: The Age of Stupid. Only one night. A veritable Woodstock for the intellectually active.
more proof that the universe is a botched job
Somebody turned off the Gulf Stream.
Many scientists are puzzled by this. A few are even alarmed. But it’s pretty clear what’s really going on: Loki finally got around to seeing The Day After Tomorrow.
It could get worse. If he ever gets a digital converter and sees a rerun of Supervolcano, the National Park Service is going to have a lot of ’splainin’ to do.
And then there’s that potential problem with the earth’s polarity . . .
If you see Hubble photos of the Aurora Borealis spelling “TILT” in strobing letters, fasten your seat belt . . .
regular or extra crispy?
They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent…Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger. The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences …We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now . . .
- Winston Churchill, November 12, 1936
The science is beyond rational dispute. Sure, there are those who will continue to deny or find “reasonable” excuses for delay. But in the end it will come down to a Hobson’s Choice. There will be no options. The decision will be the inevitable consequence of indecision. It may come down to who lives and who dies. It also may come down to a more simple proposition – when they die – most of them, maybe all of them – as a consequence of disease, famine, war, or worse.
Paleontologists and biologists are increasingly referring to the present era as the “sixth great extinction” because of the unprecedented – and increasing – rate of species loss. They aren’t talking about polar bears. One quarter of the world’s corals have already died – the rest are facing imminent threat and collapse. Marine life is in full retreat. The oceans are approaching a level of acidification beyond which they will no longer be able to absorb CO2.
These facts apply to conditions affecting two-thirds of planet’s surface. The remaining third – the dry land we inhabit – is equally challenged. Massive losses of vegetation. Desertification of once arable land. Failing aquifers. Rapidly melting glaciers and ice sheets. More and larger forest fires.
And then there’s what everybody thinks of when someone says “global warming” or “climate change” – the accelerating increase in average global temperature. A few years ago, the consensus was that a one to two degree rise by the end of the century was likely. Now it’s more than twice the hike in half the time. Worse, we’ve already put enough greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere to push this trend forward for centuries into the future.
This is not conjecture. It is not some scheme cooked up by a cabal of tenured Ph.D.s with a secret design for world domination. It’s not a foreign plot aimed at making the US less competitive. It is not the plot line in a Michael Moore script or Al Gore’s gambit for another Oscar. It is fact. It is inescapable.
But that may be too much to get your mind around. It doesn’t exactly require a leap of faith – just the same degree of imagination required to translate a national security briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack in US” into a modest increase in airport security or take the information in a 2001 article in Scientific American titled “Drowning New Orleans” at face value and apply it to a program to upgrade the levees and review the evacuation plans.
This is just not that hard.
But in case you are still not persuaded that the present course is untenable, the implications can be drilled down to a personal level. Instead of greenhouse gasses, worry about carcinogens – chemicals that cause cancer. Burning fossil fuels dumps vast quantities of cancer-causing compounds into the air every day. You are breathing them in. Your children are awash in them. They are another inescapable fact – and they will kill you, or someone you know or love – and there’s almost nothing we can do about it.
Almost.
We have the technology – right now – today – to completely transform our energy economy from one based on fossil fuels to one based on totally free fuel sources. Solar. Wind. Tidal. Geothermal. It’s just not that big of a deal. It will cause a little bit of displacement. It will also create tremendous economic opportunity. And vastly increase our national security. And balance our trade deficit. And much more.
It will also make us all healthier. And lower our healthcare costs. And, most importantly, make it much more likely that you, and those you love, and those who play some large or small role in your daily life, will avoid the pain and suffering of cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Or worse.
We can do something now – or wait for the inevitable “Pearl Harbor Moment”. Now will cost a lot less – as it always does when a real possibility of disaster presents itself. Waiting for Pearl Harbor carries with it the very real possibility of defeat.
