Minor Thoughts from me to you

Mattel, Hasbro, and Lego have figured out how to use the government to hurt their competitors. They'll ask for more government regulation.

Acknowledging a growing crisis of public confidence caused by a series of recent recalls, the nation's largest toy makers have taken the unusual step of asking the federal government to impose mandatory safety-testing standards for all toys sold in the United States.

The toy manufacturers, of course, claim that they're only doing this in the interests of public safety and in reassuring the public before the Christmas shopping season. Of course, they're might be another reason.

Instead, companies would be required to hire independent laboratories to check a certain portion of their toys, whether made in the United States or overseas. Leading toy companies already do such testing, but industry officials acknowledge that it has not been enough.

... Small companies that currently do little or no testing would be required to pay for testing as well.

So, the large companies already do testing. Recent events have proven that testing isn't always enough to catch dangerous toys. No matter. They'll use the cover of recent events to force their smaller competitors to pay for testing as well. This won't necessarily do anything to improve the safety of toys, but it will do a lot to raise the manufacturing costs (and retail prices) of toys from their competitors.

How clever.

You know, if Mattel, Hasbro, and Lego believe in stronger testing, they could start doing it all by themselves, without the force of the federal government behind them. They could then run an intensive ad campaign talking about their new testing system and what they're doing to make their toys safe for children. This would accomplish their stated goals, they wouldn't have to wait for the government to act, and they could probably increase sales as well.

But it wouldn't hurt their smaller competitors like government regulation would. So, they won't do it. Government regulation -- it's just another way to say "legal mugging".

Should nursing mothers get longer breaks on tests?

One test stands between Sophie Currier and her Harvard medical degree and a prestigious residency.

But Ms. Currier says she runs a high risk of failing the test unless the National Board of Medical Examiners gives her additional break time to pump breast milk for her 4-month-old daughter.

The board has refused the request, and on Thursday, Ms. Currier asked a Massachusetts Superior Court judge to order it to give her extra time on each of two days of testing, plus a private room with a power outlet so she can express her milk in private with an electric pump. (The nine-hour exam, on clinical knowledge, allows 45 minutes for breaks.)

I don't know what's fair in this situation. Students have a strict time limit to take the test and consider their answers. Giving this mother extra time might give her an edge through extra time to consider answers or relax. Then again, is it fair to give up all chance of a career because of a welcome but ill-timed pregnancy. So, I don't know what the answer is.

I do know this. The National Board of Medical Examiners is the only organization that can license students to practice as doctors. The NBME has a state monopoly on licensing and accreditation. As long as they have this monopoly, no other licensing organization can offer tests with different rules or opportunities. Students are limited to the options offered by one, inflexible organization. Is this any way to run a healthcare system?

I'd like to see multiple, competing accreditation organizations. Students would be able to choose who to take test from. Employers would be able to choose who to accept licenses from. If one organization proved to be unfair or inflexible, both students and employers would have a choice to use someone else's services.

Wouldn't that be the more American way to run healthcare?

More than two years after Hurricane Katrina, much of New Orleans still lays in ruins. There are those that would blame that on the federal government. They are the same people that blame President Bush for their uncut lawns and unweeded gardens.

Instead, there are two things to consider: one, where are the local leaders who should be stepping up and rebuilding; two, should New Orleans be rebuilt?

There are some leaders stepping up in the city, but they're not from the government.

In Waveland, Mississippi, for example, the manager of the local Wal-Mart worked with the company's corporate officials to open a store under a tent in the parking lot, then later opened a convenient, easily accessible "Wal-Mart Express"-the first-ever store of its type-designed especially for post-Katrina Mississippi.

Down the road in Bay St. Louis, I spoke with resident Alicia Cool, who told me she reopened her flower shop because "without business you can't have people wanting to come back and stay here." Despite the devastation all around her, her perseverance paid off. Her sales went through the roof.

One example is Doris Voitier, the superintendent of the St. Bernard Parish Schools. Voitier became something of a local hero when she realized that functional schools were critical to getting residents to move back to the parish. She decided she'd figure out a way to open them, bureaucracy be damned. ... For her heroic efforts to reopen her schools, Voitier would later be investigated for misappropriation of federal property.

Neighborhood associations are a good example. LaToya Cantrell, who by day works for an education non-profit, turned the 75-year old Broadmoor Improvement Association into a leading example of how to organize a neighborhood to rebuild. ... The neighborhood association wants to open a charter school in an abandoned school building. The parish school board, fighting further the decay of its authority, is doing everything it can to prevent them.

Get the government out of New Orleans and residents might be able to accomplish more. But we should also ask whether it's even worth rebuilding New Orleans.

The Democratic debate over the future of New Orleans somehow passed over the instructive example of Valmeyer, Ill. In 1993, the town of 900 was swamped, not for the first time, by a rain-swollen Mississippi River. It hasn't been swamped since, because it's not there anymore. Rather than remain in a vulnerable spot, the residents voted to relocate their village to a bluff 400 feet above the river.

But no one wants to suggest similar discretion in Louisiana.

The cost of the levee system envisioned by Sen. Clinton is tabbed at $40 billion. Restoring other infrastructure would increase the cost. The question is whether that's the best use of our resources. For $40 billion, you could give more than $61,000 to every Louisianan displaced by Katrina -- nearly a quarter of a million dollars for a family of four.

Here's the question that ought to be considered: Would those people prefer that the money be spent shoring up dikes around a natural lake? Or would they rather get the money themselves and decide whether to stay or migrate to less soggy terrain?

Living in soggy terrain is expensive. It's expensive to keep out the water and it's expensive to rebuild after the water forces its way in. Many residents are finally starting to see that cost.

The extensive damage done by the storms of 2005 has sharply raised the cost of homeowners' insurance in the region, for those who can find a policy at all. Those costs have become a major impediment to recovery.

"It makes it very difficult for people, particularly those of marginal means, who want to come back, to rebuild," said Lawrence Ponoroff, the dean of the Tulane University School of Law here. "It is very tough on institutions and on attracting new business to the area."

The higher premiums have made buying a house -- or selling one -- here more difficult, said Lynda Nugent Smith, who has been selling real estate here for 34 years. "All of a sudden your insurance goes from $2,000 a year to $6,000 a year," Ms. Smith said. "It's just that cherry on top that makes the whole pile of ice cream and whipped cream fall over."

New Orleans residents should make the decision to stay or go for themselves. But they should do so with a full understanding of the costs and risks inherent in staying. It is not the responsibility of the other 49 states in the Union to rebuild New Orleans every time it floods. Nor is it a constitutional right to live in a flood plain and have your home rebuilt each time it floods.

I'm glad to see local leaders stepping up and helping to bring life back to New Orleans. They're proving their commitment to the city by working on the city. But I'm also glad to see insurance prices rising. Those that stay in the city should bear the costs of doing so, not push those costs onto you and me. Insurance is just a way of making those costs visible. It would be criminal to attempt to hide those costs or force others to shoulder them.

Local Oregon homeowners were flooded out last month. Six properties, worth about $1 million total, were significantly damaged. Now the homeowners want the village government to buy their properties -- at their pre-flood value -- so they can start over in a new house.

What?

Johnson said he'll be happy if the village makes him an offer that comes close to what he could get if he sold his house under normal circumstances.

"We know that's a problem area," Staton said of the low-lying section where the homes were built in the mid-1960s. "If I lived there, or if my kids lived there, I'd want to be bought out and be able to live someplace else, " he said.

Mark Below, Oregon 's director of public works, said the developers who put up the homes evidently felt the area was dry enough to build on. "There was no floodplain mapping done at that time, " he said.

Village Trustee Jon Lourigan said if federal and state funding falls through, the village should use taxpayer dollars to buy the homes.

...buying the properties without outside assistance would be an enormous purchase for a village whose operating budget this year is $4.8 million.

This is what flood insurance is supposed to cover. Apparently, none of these homeowners had flood insurance. They gambled that their homes would never flood. They lost that bet. Now they want someone else to cover their losses.

These homeowners want to potentially increase the village budget by 25%, so that they can get out of their existing homes and into new ones with zero financial loss? What selfishness! Taxes would have to go up for the entire rest of the village in order to accomplish this.

At least have the guts to walk through the village door by door demanding $125 from each person in the house. Because that's what you're doing here, Mr. Johnson. And if you'd be too ashamed, embarrassed, or scared to that, you should be too embarrassed and ashamed to ask for tax handouts.

Many people want to limit immigration in order to provide more jobs to Americans. They theorize that without lots of immigrants willing to work for cheap labor, farmers and businesses will be forced to employ more Americans, at higher wages.

It's a nice theory. But that's all it is. The law of unintended consequences applies even to immigration policy. Rather than accepting a loss of Mexican field hands, farmers are being to move their fields to Mexico.

Steve Scaroni, a farmer from California, looked across a luxuriant field of lettuce here in central Mexico and liked what he saw: full-strength crews of Mexican farm workers with no immigration problems.

Farming since he was a teenager, Mr. Scaroni, 50, built a $50-million business growing lettuce and broccoli in California's Imperial Valley, relying on the hands of immigrant workers, most of them Mexicans and many probably in the United States illegally.

But early last year he began shifting part of his operation to rented fields here. Now some 500 Mexicans tend his crops in Mexico, where they run no risk of deportation.

"I'm as American red-blood as it gets," Mr. Scaroni said, "but I’m tired of fighting the fight on the immigration issue."

Oops.

Bad news from Madison. First of all, we're suffering from lots of hungry mosquitos. Secondly, the Madison City Council is in session. Hold on to your wallets.

City Council backs RTA

The Regional Transportation Authority endorsement that the Madison City Council passed 18-2 at 2 a.m. today opens the door to an enhanced regional bus system and using some of the potential sales tax revenue for property tax relief.

Falk and Cieslewicz have said the RTA would not be created unless approved by voters in a referendum. Also, the new panel would have to have its taxing authority approved by the Legislature. If approved, it is expected to raise the county sales tax by 0.5 percent and use the revenue for transportation improvements.

I have little faith that Madison and Dane County will actually lower my overall tax burden. No, the blood sucking mosquitos of local government are hungry for more. I think I prefer nature's own on this one.

It used to be that DUI citations were given out for actually driving while under the influence of alcohol. Increasingly, they're being given out for simply being "under the influence". This strikes me as a gross violation of civil liberties. Since when did it become illegal to simply have alcohol in your system?

The first story comes from Hamburg, New Jersey.

A New Jersey appellate court yesterday upheld the principle that convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) can be imposed on individuals who were not driving. David Montalvo, 36, found this out as he responsibly tried to sleep off his intoxication in his GMC pickup truck while safely stopped in the parking lot of the Market Place Deli on a cold February morning last year. At around 5am he awoke to see a Hamburg Police Department patrolman standing over him. The officer had opened the door of Montalvo's truck to rouse the man and insist that he take a breathalyzer test. Montalvo refused.

For his attempt to follow the law and drive responsibly, David Montalvo now owes the city more than $4000, plus legal fees. Punishing people for doing the right thing in an effort to motivate them to do the right thing. I think New Jersey has discovered an entirely new principle of human behavior.

Next up, Rochester New Hampshire. Dover man arrested for taping his DWI investigation

A 48-year-old Chestnut Street man was arrested early this morning for wiretapping for allegedly recording police while they were investigating him for driving while intoxicated.

Police say they were patrolling the downtown area at 2:54 a.m. when they discovered Christopher A. Power of 52 Chestnut St. sitting in the driver's seat of a vehicle with its motor running at the Rochester Common.

After speaking with Power, police began investigating him for driving while intoxicated and arrested him. During the arrest an audio recording device was discovered.

Not only is it apparently illegal to sit in a parked car while alcohol is in your blood, it's also illegal to record police in the performance of their duties.

Err, since when? They work for the public, in the public good. Shouldn't the public be allowed to monitor that that's actually what they're doing? What are the police trying to hide? I thought the government line was that only criminals should be afraid of surveillance. Are the New Hampshire police hiding something?

An Iowa judge recently ruled that Iowa's ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional. That makes an older article by Francis Beckwith relevant once again.

I believe, however, that given present circumstances that the best strategy is to take the mayor at his word and employ "street theatre" in a provocative way in order to force the other side to defend their marital nihilism in all its glory. Here's the plan: Have about 50 folks go to San Francisco city hall and request marriage licenses, but not for gay marriages, rather, for other sorts of "unions" that are also forbidden by the state: three bisexuals from two genders, one person who wants to marry himself (and have him accuse the mayor of "numberism," the prejudice that marriage must include more than one person), two married couples who want a temporary "wife-swap lease," a couple consisting of two brothers, two sisters, or a brother and a sister, an adult mother and son, and a man who wants to add a second wife and a first husband in order to have a "marital ensemble," etc., etc. Let's see if the mayor will give these people "marriage" licenses. If not, why not? If not, then the jig is up and the mayor actually has to explain the grounds on which he will not give licenses to these folks. But what could those grounds be? That it would break the law? That marriage has a nature, a purpose, that is not the result of social construction or state fiat? If so, then what is it and why?

This is the sort of public philosophical interrogation that has to occur if the social conservatives really want to win. All their legal and social-science posturing -- i. e., their appeal to what the majority of citizens want, etc. -- will be for naught unless they can press the other side to account for their point of view. For this is not a dispute about "policy." It is a battle over the nature of who and what we are and whether we can know it. It is philosophical combat over metaphysical turf with no Switzerland to which one can flee for asylum.

Rolling Stone on ethanol. They're not complimentary.

The Ethanol Scam: One of America's Biggest Political Boondoggles

The great danger of confronting peak oil and global warming isn't that we will sit on our collective asses and do nothing while civilization collapses, but that we will plunge after "solutions" that will make our problems even worse. Like believing we can replace gasoline with ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel that we make from corn.

Ethanol, of course, is nothing new. American refiners will produce nearly 6 billion gallons of corn ethanol this year, mostly for use as a gasoline additive to make engines burn cleaner. But in June, the Senate all but announced that America's future is going to be powered by biofuels, mandating the production of 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022. According to ethanol boosters, this is the beginning of a much larger revolution that could entirely replace our 21-million-barrel-a-day oil addiction. Midwest farmers will get rich, the air will be cleaner, the planet will be cooler, and, best of all, we can tell those greedy sheiks to fuck off. As the king of ethanol hype, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, put it recently, "Everything about ethanol is good, good, good."

This is not just hype -- it's dangerous, delusional bullshit. Ethanol doesn't burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption -- yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World. And the increasing acreage devoted to corn for ethanol means less land for other staple crops, giving farmers in South America an incentive to carve fields out of tropical forests that help to cool the planet and stave off global warming.

Here's the best single quote in the article: "'Corn ethanol is essentially a way of recycling natural gas,' says Robert Rapier, an oil-industry engineer who runs the R-Squared Energy Blog."

In Washington, Aid to Homeowners Debated - New York Times

Faced with a possible tidal wave of home foreclosures beginning this fall, Democrats and Republicans are battling over a philosophical question with huge practical implications: should the government ride to the rescue?

Both the Bush administration and Democratic leaders in Congress agree that legions of homeowners could be overwhelmed in the next 18 months, as low teaser rates expire on more than two million adjustable-rate mortgages, causing monthly payments increase sharply.

But the Bush administration and Congressional Democrats are ideologically divided about what Washington should do. Administration officials are reluctant to bail out people who bought homes they could not afford or simply gambled that easy credit and rising real estate prices would lead to quick profits.

Democrats, though opposed to a broad bailout, are proposing an array of measures to help lower-income people renegotiate their loans and stay in their homes.

The proposals would expand the program of insuring home loans under the Federal Housing Administration, part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development; create a national fund for "affordable housing"; expand the ability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored finance companies, to buy renegotiated subprime mortgages; and give bankruptcy judges more power to order easier terms for borrowers.

The Bush administration, with the Treasury Department heading the efforts, is looking for more limited solutions. Administration officials are working on their own ideas to let the F.H.A. insure slightly more expensive homes, which could make it easier for people with low incomes or weak credit to switch out of subprime mortgages and into more traditional fixed-rate loans.

I realize that bailing out overextended homeowners plays well in election years. But what's the long-term cost? If we bail out everyone that bought more than they could afford, if we bail out everyone who didn't ask hard questions before signing a $200,000 loan, if we bail out those too eager for quick riches to read the fine print, what message do we send?

A bailout is just another way of subsidizing risky, irresponsible behavior.

The government needs to let the housing market land however it lands. Everyone involved in the current crisis bears some responsibility for the crisis. Banks got a little too loose with their money. Would-be homeowners got a little too confident in an ever brighter tomorrow. Bad decisions were made all around.

A bailout would only convince people and banks that it's okay to take on huge risks -- Uncle Sam is waiting to save you and protect you from consequences. Ultimately, that's more dangerous to the economy than a turndown in the housing market.

Giuliani on Taxes and a Homeowner Bailout - Capital Commerce (usnews.com)

I had a chance to chat with Rudy Giuliani this weekend, on Saturday morning, just after he finished with his "tax summit" campaign event in Manchester, N.H. There, Giuliani offered his case for making the Bush cuts permanent, killing the estate tax (or "death tax," as he puts it), indexing the alternative minimum tax to inflation, and lowering corporate taxes. The easy-reading, truncated version of the interview can be found here. But lucky CapCom readers get to peruse the longer "director's cut." No Iraq, no abortion, no immigration"”just hardcore economic policy. Giuliani speaks at length about taxes, Social Security, and the mortgage crisis.

Guiliani continues to intrigue me from an economic, fiscal-policy perspective. This interview shows some of the reasons.

If you're interested in Guiliani's economic record as Mayor of New York City, the Club for Growth has a breakdown.

Senator Warner's Bad Withdrawal Symptoms

Out here in Anbar Province, al Qaeda did what religion-driven extremists always do eventually -- they over-reached, setting the bar so high that nonfanatics couldn't measure up (nor did they want to). The terrorists responded with a campaign of slaughter against their fellow Muslims.

Now the Sunni Arabs who were fighting so bitterly against us are fighting beside us to destroy al Qaeda in Iraq. And the terrorists are going down.

Out here in Anbar Province -- long the most troubled in Iraq -- the change has come so swiftly and thoroughly that it's dazzling. Marines who were under fire routinely just months ago are now directing their former enemies in battle.

Although this trend has been reported, our battlefield leaders here agree that the magnitude of the shift hasn't registered back home: Al Qaeda is on the verge of a humiliating, devastating strategic defeat - rejected by their fellow Sunni Muslims.

If we don't quit, this will not only be a huge practical win - it'll be the information victory we've been aching for.

No matter what the Middle Eastern media might say, everyone in the Arab and greater Sunni Muslim world will know that al Qaeda was driven out of Iraq by a combination of Muslims and Americans.

Think that would help al Qaeda's recruitment efforts? Even now, the terrorists have to resort to lies about their prospective missions to gain recruits.

With the sixth anniversary of 9/11 approaching, how dare we throw away so great a potential victory over those who attacked our country?

In From the Cold: Worth Saving?

The assessment, which was requested by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), has been sitting on the shelf for more than two years, and the agency vigorously fought to prevent its release. The current CIA Director, Air Force General Mike Hayden, claims that release of the report could be "distracting."

If there's any good news in the executive summary, here it is: As far as the IG can determine, CIA employees broke no laws in their counter-terrorism activities before 9-11. The bad news? The agency's efforts in the years before the attacks were characterized by bureaucratic incompetence and bungling on a scale that is almost unimaginable.

Apparently, bin Laden and his Al Qaida operatives had little to fear from the CIA; as the IG discovered, the agency was beset by ineffective leadership, serious resource shortfalls, squabbles with other agencies, and the lack of a viable plan for analyzing--and combating--the terrorist organization, among other problems. Describing the agency as an intelligence calamity waiting to happen would be charitable.

The stunning, substantive details of those failures are well-documented in the summary, suggesting that the CIA was adrift, rudderless and unaccountable in the years leading up to 9-11. Mr. Tenet steadfastly maintains that he had a plan to counter Al Qaida, but (according to the IG), that plan was never effectively communicated or implemented within the agency. Analysis of the terrorist organization was slipshod; prior to the 9-11 attacks, the CIA's last major assessment on bin Laden was completed in 1993.

Perhaps the most damning aspect of the IG summary is its recommendation for Accountability Boards to review the performance of (a) the former DCI, Mr. Tenet; (b) the CIA Executive Director in the late 1990s; (c) the Deputy Director of Operations (DDO) and (d) the two senior officers who served as Director of the CTC during the same period. In other words, the IG is inferring that CIA management--at the organization's highest levels--failed miserably at their responsibilities in going after Al Qaida, and should be held accountable for their desultory performance.

Seriously. Burn the CIA to the ground. Fire everyone there. Close down and blow up the building. Hire new intelligence people. Allow former employees to reapply, but they start the interview process with two strikes against them. Would we get a lot of new, raw employees that are unfamiliar with gathering intelligence? Sure. Could they be any worse than the current CIA, though? Hard to imagine.

Should we pull back from Iraq and change our mission from counterinsurgency to just providing security for the Iraqi government? Not according to the latest National Intelligence Estimate.

"We assess that changing the mission of Coalition forces from a primarily counterinsurgency and stabilization role to a primary combat support role for Iraqi forces and counterterrorist operations to prevent AQI from establishing a safehaven would erode security gains achieved thus far. The impact of a change in mission on Iraq's political and security environment and throughout the region probably would vary in intensity and suddenness of onset in relation to the rate and scale of a Coalition redeployment. Developments within the Iraqi communities themselves will be decisive in determining political and security trajectories."

I know it's cliche, but we really do need to stay the course in Iraq right now. Events on the ground are changing too rapidly for us to make a change and predict what it's effects will be.

Attrition: Al Qaeda Fades From Iraq

But the most compelling bit of news on al Qaedas demise in Iraq is the changing composition of the hostiles there. At the beginning of the year, about 70 percent of terror attacks were by al Qaeda, and their Sunni Arab allies. Now, only about fifty percent of , a lower number of, those attacks are al Qaeda. The rest are Iranian supported Shia Arab groups, who are also trying to establish a religious dictatorship in Iraq (one run by Shias, not by Sunnis, as al Qaeda wants.) Al Qaeda is taking a major beating because so many Sunni Arab tribes have turned on it. Three years ago, al Qaeda formed a coalition with the Sunni Arab tribes, promising that al Qaeda terrorists would put Sunni Arabs back in charge of the country. Few Sunni Arabs still believe that, and consider al Qaeda a murderous nuisance.

Iran has backed Shia Arab militias even before the 2003 invasion. Iranian involvement goes back to the 1980s war with Iraq (and even earlier). One of the reasons for that war (which began with an Iraqi invasion of Iran), was Shia clerics taking over the government in Iran, and announcing their intention to take over the world. While the rest of the world was not too concerned, Saddam Hussein was. That's because most (well, 60 percent back then) of Iraqis are Shia Moslems, just like over 90 percent of Iranians. Iran wanted to influence Iraqi Shias, and convince them (through persuasion or intimidation) to support Iran. Once Saddam was out of the way, Iran went forward with its plan. Islamic radicals in the Iranian government are willing to start another civil war in Iraq to get their way. And that's what's happening now, as U.S. troops go after Iranian supported Iraqi Shias who have been attacking American troops.

How to relieve poverty in oil-rich third-world countries.

1. Invade and take over the oil wells
2. Give control of the oil wells to private corporations
3. The government -- deprived of easy oil money to buy elections and support -- will begin to govern better

It's crazy, but it just might work.

While in Massachusets, Mitt Rimney created the "RomneyCare" mandated health plan. Now that he's running for President, he's getting ready to push for a free market solution.

Romney to Pitch a State-by-State Health Insurance Plan - New York Times

It relies on federal incentives for market reforms, tax deductions and other changes to encourage people to buy health insurance and drive down costs.

There is no individual mandate in Mr. Romney's plan for the rest of the country. Instead, it concentrates on a "federalist" approach, premised on the belief that it is impossible to create a uniform system for the entire country. Along these lines, the federal government would offer incentives to states to take their own necessary steps to bring down the cost of health insurance.

According to a preview of the presentation provided by Mr. Romney's policy advisers yesterday, Mr. Romney will highlight how the nearly 45 million uninsured in the country can be divided into roughly three groups: about a third are eligible for public programs but are not enrolled; a third are low income but ineligible for public programs and need some help from the government to purchase health insurance; a third are middle income but have chosen not to buy health insurance.

In his plan, Mr. Romney proposes taking federal money currently being used to help states cover the cost of medical care for the uninsured and offering that money to states to help low-income people who are not eligible for Medicaid and other public programs to buy their own private health insurance.

The same pool of money will be wielded as a carrot for states to reform their health insurance regulations to help drive costs down and make plans affordable. That would include reducing the number of requirements for coverage that states impose on health insurance providers or lifting restrictions in some states on health maintenance organizations.

Mr. Romney, who helped found a hugely successful private equity firm, argues that the existing tax system penalizes those who do not acquire their health insurance through their employer, and that has prevented the development of a vigorous, affordable health insurance market. Those who acquire health insurance from their employers pay for their premiums with pre-tax dollars, but those who do not must use post-tax dollars to buy it. So Mr. Romney wants to allow people who buy their own health insurance to be able to deduct premiums, deductibles and co-payments from their income.

Eventually, Ms. Canfield said, the goal would be for people to be able to opt out of employer plans if they do not like them and go out on the individual market to buy health insurance on their own.

These all sound like really good ideas from the bare bones descriptions. It's a shame that Governor Romney didn't push for a plan like this while he was in Massachusets. It's possible that he didn't do so because the Massachusets legislature never would have gone along with it. On the other hand, his actions as governor leave me unsure of how President Romney would react to a stubborn Democratic Congress.

Should we raise taxes to pay for road and bridge repair? In the wake of the Minnesota bridge collaspse, many politicians are certainly saying that we should. But what have they done with the road money that they already have?

Of Bridges and Taxes

James Oberstar, the Minnesota Democrat who runs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, recently stood beside the wreckage and recommended an increase in the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax, as a way to prevent future bridge collapses. His wing man, Alaska Republican and former Transportation Chairman Don Young, agrees wholeheartedly.

As it happens, these are the same men who played the lead role in the $286 billion 2005 federal highway bill. That's the bill that diverted billions of dollars of gas tax money away from urgent road and bridge projects toward Member earmarks for bike paths, nature trails and inefficient urban transit systems.

As recently as July 25, Mr. Oberstar sent out a press release boasting that he had "secured more than $12 million in funding" for his state in a recent federal transportation and housing bill. But $10 million of that was dedicated to a commuter rail line, $250,000 for the "Isanti Bike/Walk Trail," $200,000 to bus services in Duluth, and $150,000 for the Mesabi Academy of Kidspeace in Buhl. None of it went for bridge repair.

Even transportation dollars aren't scarce. Minnesota spends $1.6 billion a year on transportation--enough to build a new bridge over the Mississippi River every four months. But nearly $1 billion of that has been diverted from road and bridge repair to the state's light rail network that has a negligible impact on traffic congestion. Last year part of a sales tax revenue stream that is supposed to be dedicated for road and bridge construction was re-routed to mass transit. The Minnesota Department of Economic Development reports that only 2.8% of the state's commuters ride buses or rail to get to work, but these projects get up to 25% of the funding.

How is this not illegal? Select Hospitals Reap a Windfall Under Child Bill - New York Times

Despite promises by Congress to end the secrecy of earmarks and other pet projects, the House of Representatives has quietly funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to specific hospitals and health care providers under a bill passed this month to help low-income children.

... One hospital, Bay Area Medical Center, sits on Green Bay, straddling the border between Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, more than 200 miles north of Chicago. The bill would increase Medicare payments to the hospital by instructing federal officials to assume that it was in Chicago, where Medicare rates are set to cover substantially higher wages for hospital workers.

The bill, for example, would give special treatment to two hospitals in Kingston, N.Y., stipulating that Medicare should pay them as if they were in New York City, 80 miles away. Representative Maurice D. Hinchey, Democrat of New York, who worked to get this provision into the bill, said it would allow the hospitals to pay competitive wages so they could keep top health care professionals.

John E. Finch Jr., a vice president of Benedictine Hospital, one of the two in Kingston, said the bill would "make a significant difference to us financially," increasing the payment for a typical Medicare case by $1,000.

Republicans sometimes did the same thing when they controlled Congress. Under a 1999 law, for example, a small hospital in rural Dixon, Ill., was deemed to be in the Chicago area "” 95 miles away "” at the behest of its congressman, J. Dennis Hastert, who was then speaker.

This is outright fraud. No matter how hard hospital administrators pretend different, these hospitals are not in New York City or Chicago. The hospitals will be taking money that the law says they're not entitled to. That's wrong. Any doctor trying to defraud Medicare out of that much money would be stripped of his license, find, and probably jailed. Why should these Congress men and women be treated any differently?

Even President Bush realizes that spending has to be prioritized. Sadly, Congress has yet to learn the lesson. Bush Rejects Gas Tax as Way to Shore Up Bridges - New York Times

Asked about the gasoline proposal, which could amount to an increase of 5 cents a gallon under schemes floating around Congress, Mr. Bush said, "Before we raise taxes, which could affect economic growth, I would strongly urge the Congress to examine how they set priorities."

In a nod to using earmarks to pay for transportation projects like the one supposed to pay for the "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska, Mr. Bush said:

"From my perspective, the way it seems to have worked is that each member on that committee gets to set his or her own priority first, and then whatever is left over is spent through a funding formula. That's not the right way to prioritize the people's money."

Why is Congress talking about raising the gas tax?

Representative James L. Oberstar, Democrat of Minnesota and chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, suggested this week that a tax increase might be needed to finance a proposed trust fund to repair bridges in the Federal Highway System, A large percentage of the bridges have been identified as having structural problems.

Mr. Oberstar raised the possibility of a temporary 5-cent-a-gallon tax. The idea has some bipartisan support.

Representative Don Young, Republican of Alaska and former chairman of the transportation panel, said he could possibly support such a tax. Mr. Young has previously voiced support for increasing the gasoline tax.

Oh, well, if Don Young supports it, it must be a good idea. This is, after all, the same man under Federal investigation for taking bribes. He's also infamous for treating tax money as his own personal slush fund. Obviously, we should follow Rep. Young's advice on tax policy.

No, wait. I've reconsidered. Let's prioritize our spending instead. Let Congress actually decide to fund what matters instead of what personally enriches them. Then we could repair the nation's bridges without needing to raise a dollar of additional taxes.

That would demonstrate true political courage.