Thursday, March 11, 2010

Mississippi Hates People with Allergies or Colds

Mississippi governor Haley Barbour signed a bill last month requiring all patients to get a prescription before buying any medicine containing pseudoephedrine.

This is insane. This is seriously insane. This law — and Federal laws requiring Sudafed to be kept behind the pharmacist’s counter — have done nothing to curtail access to meth. These laws have accomplished one thing and one thing only: meth production has been shifted from small labs to super high tech Mexican labs. Meth is still plentiful in the United States. But it’s now fueling the growth of Mexican drug gangs and Mexican smugglers. If anything, the status quo ante was better in that it wasn’t creating sophisticated cross-border smuggling operations.

Now, every Mississippi resident suffering from allergies, sinuses, or colds will have to go to a doctor before they’re able to get any effective relief. Doctors’ offices and emergency rooms will become more crowded and the entire state population will be vastly inconvenienced. All for a law that will have no practical effect whatsoever.

For the record, Governor Barbour will not be getting my vote, should he decide to run in the Republican presidential primaries.


Topics: Government, Healthcare | Tags: , , , , | Comments (0) | More by Joe Martin |

Your Doctor May Not Be Around Much Longer

“Let me be clear: if you like your doctor, you can keep him”. Who hasn’t heard the President make that promise by now? The problem is, it makes a huge assumption. That promise assumes that your doctor isn’t going to retire as a result of healthcare reform.

The New England Journal of Medicine reports that more than 30% of physicians want to leave medical practice if the current healthcare reform plans are implemented.

In other news, nurses report that they spent 25% of their time doing “indirect patient care”.

Nurses reported having to document patient care information in multiple locations, in addition to having to complete logs, checklists and other redundant paperwork that prevented them from having more time with their patients. Beyond these paperwork redundancies, nurses reported significant time being wasted trying to secure needed equipment and supplies.

When asked for solutions to these challenges, nurses recommended a combination of ancillary staff support, hospital-wide communications technology and reductions in redundant regulatory requirements.

Adding more bureaucracy, rules, and paperwork to the medical process is unlikely to make things better. Doctors may quit and nurses may quit. But, by all means, bring on the healthcare reform. If you like your doctor, the President has promised you can keep him. And the President is an honorable man.


Chill Out About Toyota Already

Well, I haven’t posted anything about the Toyota brouhaha yet. So this is it.

Car and Driver takes down the Prius drivers whining about their brakes. Their high-tech regenerative breaks that all of them were so proud of a few years ago.

Popular Mechanics explains in painstaking detail exactly why Professor Dave Gilbert, of Southern Illinois University, is dead, dead wrong when he claims that electromagnetic interference causes unintended acceleration in Toyota’s cars. Henry Payne points out that Professor Gilbert is being paid by trial lawyers suing Toyota and that ABC has been airing fraudulent footage in support of these fraudulent claims.

Finally, Steve Chapman reminds us that Toyota’s are still amazingly safe.

During the last decade, the sudden acceleration of Toyota vehicles has been blamed for 34 fatalities. In that same period, more than 21,000 other people died in accidents while riding in Toyotas. Your own lapses, and those of other drivers, are far riskier than the flaws found in your automobile.

Chuck Hurley, CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, agrees on the pressing need for Toyota to repair its troubled cars. But he estimates that more than 80 percent of traffic deaths are the result of excessive speed, drunken driving, or unused seat belts. Last year alone, more than 11,000 Americans died in accidents involving drunk drivers. By contrast, only about 2 percent of wrecks stem from vehicle defects.

In summary, take a chill pill folks. Lay off of Toyota and remember that Congress outright owns two of Toyota’s competitors. Do you think that might be influencing Congress’s shameful behavior? I do.


Topics: Reporting | Tags: , , , , , | Comments (0) | More by Joe Martin |

A Deficit Neutral Health Bill Isn’t Enough

Greg Mankiw explains the spending problems with the healthcare bill through a short, imagined dialog between two friends. Here’s the kicker:

Even if you believe that the spending cuts and tax increases in the bill make it deficit-neutral, the legislation will still make solving the problem of the fiscal imbalance harder, because it will use up some of the easier ways to close the shortfall. The remaining options will be less attractive, making the eventual fiscal adjustment more painful.

With the President’s current budgeting trends (spend as much as you can, as fast as you can), we’re facing an $11.3 trillion deficit by 2020. By that time, the federal debt will be a staggering $20.3 trillion. (The debt was $5.8 trillion at the end of 2008.)

It’s not enough to be happy that we’re maintaining the current levels of spending or — even worse — that we’re managing to spend more in a “deficit neutral” way. It’s serious business and it’s time we stopped “kicking the can down the road to future generations”, as the President likes to say.


Don’t Be Fooled. Our Economy is Still Stuck in Neutral

The Myth of the Recovery

The gains on Wall Street have been goosed largely by government spending and guarantees, not the usual private sector–funded growth. And federal spending cannot continue indefinitely without deficits and debt service spiraling out of control. John Silvia, chief economist for Wells Fargo, says, “We have seen a recovery, but it’s driven primarily by federal spending and special federal projects. The character of this recovery is very different than we’re used to.”

Consider that 37 percent of the third-quarter GDP growth was due to motor vehicle purchases, which were stimulated almost entirely by the Cash for Clunkers program. “The third quarter was really just a lot of Cash for Clunkers spending that won’t be sustained in the foreseeable future,” Silvia says. (Final statistics for fourth quarter spending were not available at press time.)

The car scheme, an attempt to jump-start the bankrupt auto industry, offered consumers a government-funded credit of up to $4,500 if they traded in their gas guzzlers for more eco-friendly vehicles. But since most participants probably were already planning to buy a new car, the program essentially shifted future demand for automobiles to the third quarter of 2009. Instead of continuing to grow, car sales dropped 34 percent immediately after the program ended. Figure 1 shows U.S. auto sales in 2009 largely following the 10-year average month-to-month change until the Cash for Clunkers credit jolted demand, followed by a subnormal drop.

This is not real growth. It’s the national equivalent of a credit-card buying spree, with the bills—in the form of debt service and unfunded liabilities—to be paid off later. It is a faux recovery.


Book List: three months in [by Adam Volle]

I’ll be updating my 2010 Reading List (primarily composed of books I uploaded to my Kindle in February) as I read through it, in no particular order.

And since I’ve gone ahead and created a post to make that announcement, I’ll go ahead and list what I’ve finished thus far, as well as brief reviews:

The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett – I paid a visit to the former chair of the Shorter College Humanities Department recently and we naturally flung books to read at each other before parting. This was his contribution to my stack – a generations-spanning chronicle of the Englishmen and women involved in the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge. The writer was previously known for his work in the thriller genre, but this radical departure quickly became his bestselling work and has even spawned three board games and a television series, as well as a sequel novel. For good reason, too: I recommend the book to any fan of historical fiction. If Follett does say so himself: “It recreates, quite vividly, the entire life of the village and the people who live there. You feel you know the place and the people as intimately as if you yourself were living there in the Middle Ages.”

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan – The movie looked like a great deal of fun, but in general I’m a firm believer of reading the book first. This was the first real disappointing read of my batch, though in all fairness that’s largely because I turned out not to be the target audience; the reading level on this one’s far below, say, the Harry Potter series, on which by the way it is far too shamelessly based (the gods’ children all attend an annual summer camp where they train, for cryin’ out loud). What I did enjoy enough to finish the story was how well Rick Riordan handles the central theme of parental abandonment. Naturally, it’s that very redeeming feature at the core which the movie mishandles as badly as possible. Instead of keeping Percy Jackson in the dark about his completely mysterious god of a father, alternately longing to meet Poseidon and hating him for leaving, the film adaptation (1) shows Poseidon in the first minute of the film, so that we don’t have any of that pesky curiousity bugging us as we take in the special effects, (2) has everyone Percy knows assuring him that Daddy loves him and is kept from his side by forces outside of his control, and (3) even has Poseidon’s voice repeatedly guiding Percy through danger. Oy.

The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway – This actually wasn’t on my reading list. A copy was included gratis by the curriculum publisher from which my school purchases all its materials and I stole it for a night. Coincidentally, two of Ernest Hemingway’s other famous novels actually are on my list.

The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton – I uploaded all 30+ of her novels onto my Kindle for .99. That never ceases to tickle me. That aside, I can’t really recommend this one. It’s not unenjoyable, but the book is written in a Victorian tradition that most modern readers will find silly and unsatisfying: the morality tale about the girl who foolishly engages in one or more Ill-Advised Activities, like putting off marriage too long or flirting with men so they buy you things. The consequences of these crimes is almost unfailingly homelessness and death in her twenties. The contrived nature of these dire ends can be hysterical, but they’re never engaging. Fortunately, Edith Wharton moved on from such stuff to write The Age of Innocence, which is a mature and engrossing study of both an unconsummated extramarital affair and New York’s high society at the beginning of the 20th century, fabulously written. Go check it out.

Nothing to Envy, by Barbara Demick – The true accounts of six North Korean refugees, who describe life beyond the DMZ and how they escaped it. Any account of the horrific and inexcusable conditions in which people in North Korea are trying to live out their lives is bound to be moving, but living as I currently do in the Koreans’ southern republic – surrounded by this proud race and witnessing the society they’re capable of achieving when not trod into the mud by a dictator – each story in this book feels barbed with greater poignancy. To see an ajumma happily teasing her toddler as she shops for dinner at an overstocked supermarket, then to read about a practically interchangeable woman watching her own baby die of starvation and incapable of even acknowledging the fact, truly impresses on one just how monstrous the crimes of Kim Jung-il and his cronies are.

The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, by Dr. Robert “The Bible Geek” Price – A biblical scholar’s assessment of the four gospels’ authenticity by one of the infamous (in Christian circles, anyway) Jesus Seminar’s founders. Dr. Price is the very opposite of a fundamentalist Christian; ometimes there seems to be no passage in the Bible which he considers believable. I don’t agree with all of his opinions (I find it likely that a historical Jesus has at least walked this Earth at some time), but he always provides a very dense, informative, and witty read. Plus, he’s a fellow comic book geek. What other Biblical scholar can you find who quotes recent issues of the Justice League of America?


Topics: Culture, Entertainment | Comments (0) | More by Adam Volle |

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

There’s Nothing Progressive or Conservative About President Obama’s Healthplan

Insurer’s Gone Wild

“We allow the insurance industry to run wild in this country,” President Obama declared on Monday. “We can’t have a system that works better for the insurance companies than it does for the American people.”

Yet Obama’s plan to tame health insurers would boost their business, protect them from competition, and guarantee their profits, all at the expense of consumers and taxpayers. It is therefore not surprising that the insurance companies, while they object to the president’s rhetoric and quibble over some of the details, are happy to be domesticated. Here are five ways in which Obama would help insurers while pretending to fight them.

There’s nothing progressive about a plan that forces people to buy products from specific companies, under penalty of law. And there’s nothing conservative about that plan either. It guarantees profits, eliminates risks, and rips off the American public. Is it any wonder that the American public opposes this plan 2-1?


Did Jesus do miracles? [by Adam Volle]

“Then some of the scribes and pharisees said to him, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” He said to them in reply, “An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it except the Sign of Jonah the prophet. Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.” (Matthew 12: 38-40)

It’s been a good, long while since I published any anti-Christian screed on this site. I feel inspired to do so today because this morning – and I want you to know I am not making this up – Atheist Me led the daily devotional for my school’s students. Their pastor couldn’t get out of his driveway and needed a fill-in.

In case you’re wondering, no: even for a man who refuses to step foot in a worship service these days and would on principle never tell a child that Jesus is alive, much less loves him or her, it was pretty easygoing. I simply asked one of the older kids to lead the rest in prayer and then chose as our subject a parable from the Gospel of Luke which I do find valuable – in this particular case, the tale of the good Samaritan.

And to digress from this post’s point, I find that this story – and indeed many stories from the Tanakh set after the reign of Solomon – have special resonance for Koreans (my students are all Korean), since these tales are set at a time when Israel is divided in twain and the northern segment of the population is considered to have gone seriously astray. In fact I like to bring home the point by reintroducing them to the tale by retelling it with new principal actors. That is, I tell them about a Korean man who gets mugged and passed over by a pastor and a missionary before being saved by a North Korean communist. In the future I plan to do the same wherever I go, should I have the opportunity: have Tutsis saved by Hutus, Jews by Muslim Palestinians, etc. I think it’s the only way to restore the desired effect of a passage that has long since lost any relevancy.

OK, then: screed time.

Matthew 12:38-40 is a pretty major smoking gun that a lot of the Gospel accounts of Jesus need to be taken with more than a grain or two of salt. Far more people – even almost everybody – should notice it, but since reading the Bible is for most an act of worship rather than an exercise in critical thinking, and one written in an alien style that easily disorients the modern reader, neither the demands of Jesus’ enemies or Jesus’ own reply seem as bizarre as they should. Their conversation really should go something like this:

PHARISEES: Teacher, give us a sign!

JESUS: Oh, for the last – Huh?

SCRIBES: Show us a miracle so that we’ll believe you!

JESUS: Forget it! Thirteen verses ago I was healing people left and right and your type accused me of witchcraft!

PHARISEES: Well… Do one now and we’ll believe you.

JESUS: No. In fact, the only miracle I’m going to show this wicked generation is the Sign of Jonah.

LAME PERSON: That’s it?

JESUS: Yes. That’s the only one. Sorry.

LAME PERSON: But you healed Matthathias down the street of his leprosy. And Rachel of her epilepsy. And… A ton of other people.

JESUS: OK, OK, I’ll heal you too. Just pipe down.

Clearly we’ve got some editorial funny business going on here; the passage simply doesn’t make sense in its context. But then whence came it? Since the Gospel of Mark doesn’t include it and both the other Synoptic Gospels do (and choose for its inclusion different places in the narrative) a decent educated guess is that it’s a quotation out of “Q”, the mysterious, missing wellspring from which the first three Gospels all seem to draw.

A’right, then: it’s a quotation of Jesus, probably pulled from a list of them, that both Matthew and Luke noted and felt should be included. Yet, what about the content of the quotation itself? First we should note that the quote itself varies according to the gospel in which it is read, meaning either Matthew, Luke, both, or subsequent editors chose to add their own touch what Jesus was saying in this passage. Luke’s adds more quotes from Jesus after it (the original, stand-alone quote at most included “An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it except the Sign of Jonah the prophet”) clearly peg the sign of Jonah to be simply Jonah’s preaching. Someone who had his hand in Matthew, however, appears to have decided that Jesus was foreshadowing here (which in the context of Gospel of Matthew is not unreasonable, less so otherwise). Rather than let the Lord’s sly allusion slip by any less savvy readers, he’s written in J.C. simply spelling it out.

Second, we note that for all the clarification Matthew’s (first? second?) author has added, we’re still left with the quandary of why the Pharisees and scribes are asking Jesus for miracles – perhaps the gospel writers simply should have placed this passage earlier in Jesus’ ministry, before He started healing? – and why Jesus says He won’t. What’s the most logical explanation?

The author or editor of Matthew tries to solve the problem himself; unlike the less gilded lilly of Luke’s gospel, in which Jesus clearly identifies the present generation as the wicked one of which He speaks, Matthew makes Jesus’ targets more generic. In Matthew, Jesus is talking about any generation that wants proof of His authority. Very handily, this not only erases the contradiction but gives churches a verse with which to counterattack when people demand they prove they represent God with some good old-fashioned miracle-working. The preferable take for Christians, then – but also the less trustworthy, since Matthew is clearly messing with his inherited text elsewhere in even the same section.

I’ll offer a different idea, using the principle of analogy and a particular comparison borrowed from the excellent book I’m reading by scholar Dr. Robert M. Price (The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man). Another would-be messiah named Sabbatai Zevi, who would unfortunately go on to really disappoint his followers by choosing to convert to Islam rather than be martyred, was said by the Jews to be working all sorts of wonders during his candidacy – despite he himself saying he wasn’t up to do any. The nature of personality cults and mystic beliefs took its course regardless, with various people claiming they’d been the recipient of his healing touch or what have you. Just as today (the overwhelming desire of the Catholic population to see Mother Theresa canonized has resulted in multiple, often embarrassing claims, such as that the visible glare of light in a photo of her is actually a heavenly radiance), people found magic where they wanted to find it.

Maybe Jesus’ followers were likewise far more responsible for His miracles, even in the face of His own knowledge and declarations that He would not perform them (He fails at one point in Mark to do any miracles, ostensibly because the people in that location have no faith). Their imagination and experiences accomplished what Jesus Himself refused to do. Their reports are what is chronicled in the Gospels.

I think the taste from this morning is out of my mouth now.


Topics: Biblical | Comments (0) | More by Adam Volle |

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The Internet is My Memory (or How a Blog Helped Me Find a Long Lost Book)

I love the internet. Love, love, love it. I find so much there.

For example, I read a book many years ago. I was visiting my grandparents as a young teenager and checked out a bunch of books from the Cuyahoga County Library. I really enjoyed one of them and it’s stuck in my mind for years as something that I’d like to re-read. Except that neither the title nor the author stuck in my mind. Just the plot. Something about Science Fiction, teenagers, summer vacation, a game, an island, and something to do with space — or a pig. Or both.

As you can imagine, it’s rather hard to find a book based on such sketchy information. I’d tried once or twice over the years but my attempts mainly revolved around browsing the stacks, hoping to find something familiar looking. I didn’t have much success and I’d pretty much given up on the attempt.

And then, out of the blue today, I found it. Art Carden wrote a post for Division of Labour entitled “The Kids Are Alright“. He included a brief comment that triggered a memory. Well, a partial memory. Okay, more like the half remembered smell of a forgotten scent. It just felt familiar in a way that I couldn’t quite define.

We then talked about books I enjoyed when I was younger (William Sleator). One of my favorite Sleator books was Interstellar Pig; I was pleasantly surprised to learn that one of these burgeoning movie-makers has it.

And, sure enough. Interstellar Pig is the book that I read all of those years ago. Amazing. Thank-you internets, with your plentiful, bounteous tubes. And thank-you, Art, for mentioning not only your favorite author but also the book title.


Topics: Culture | Tags: , , , , , , | Comments (1) | More by Joe Martin |

Question for the President | Cato @ Liberty

Question for the President | Cato @ Liberty

The rationale for your proposed tax on high-cost health insurance plans is that it would encourage people to purchase less-comprehensive coverage and thereby reduce health care spending.

If that’s a good idea, then why is it bad when insurers raise premiums?

Obviously, it’s because consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. You small minded libertarian twerp. Duh: it’s good when the government raises prices and it’s bad when the market does. Any more questions?