My Own Impromptus

• Consider in your mind for one second what your conception of what a question and answer session following a White House press conference looks like after the President addresses the nation. In my mind, I think of it as kind of chaotic with all the journalists firing up their hands, asking questions of the President and him having to come up with answers on the spot. That doesn't sound so far off, right? Well not with this President. Instead of impromptu questions, reporters submit questions beforehand and the President responds with prepared answers that he reads off of his teleprompter. That's crazy, right? Right?
  
  ...
  
  Right?
• I was watching CNN the other day while eating lunch and they were talking about health care reform. They had mentioned that one way they thought that they could pay for it would be by heavily charging insurance companies for those with premium insurance coverage. When you don't think about something like that, it kind of makes sense. Oh, well then it gets paid for by the insurance carriers, so it's not really taxing the rich, not like we're so opposed to that anyway, right? some would be inclined to think. But if you demand heavy payments from businesses, how do they cover those costs? by passing it along to the consumers. Why don't people understand this? It drives me crazy. Taxing businesses really becomes a tax on consumers. When you charge gas companies more money for higher fuel standards or whatever it is that they charge for, those companies pass it along to the consumers because how else are they going to cover those costs? I've said it before, but everyone should be forced to take at least some basic classes in economics.
• Why does it seem like everyone I know on Facebook lists themselves as moderate/liberal? I look at the groups they are associated with, and for the most part, they are far from being moderate/liberal. Why the stigma? Do you favor more taxes/abortion/same-sex marriage/big government/social programs/hate guns? Then you're probably somewhat liberal. No? Then you're conservative. Just own it.
  
• Saw a bumper sticker yesterday that said, "Pro-life is not pro-war." Ugh. Really? Pro-war is pro-a particular way of life, a life that we believe in. I know this might sound crazy, but nations go to war to preserve life, or lives, or a way of it. It's ugly, but people die in war, but hopefully they die to preserve for us an ideal - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness/property, whatever. Love this John Adams quote,

  "Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it."

• I saw somewhere that in NYC, temperatures have not climbed above 100 degrees once in either June or July. That was a first, or the first time in many, many years. So how about global warming now? Has anyone noticed how it's being referred to less as "global warming", and more as "climate change"? With this being the case, is there any way that anyone can possibly distinguish any variation in temperature without attributing it to some kind of man-made carelessness?
• I love the Carpe Diem blog. The next few items come from there. The first is about how a referendum passed in Congress that would force the legislators and their staffs to enroll in any government health-care reform plans. All Democrats in that committee voted against it. That story comes via this WSJ article.
  
• The top 1% income earners in this country pay more than the bottom 95% combined. Go here for more.
• An op-ed in the Boston Globe discusses the healthcare legislation here. The author, Jeff Jacoby mentions,

  IMAGINE the sort of car you’d drive if government regulations made it illegal to sell any automobile that didn’t feature 380-horsepower direct-injection V6 engines, computer-controlled electric power steering, eight-speed automatic transmission, four-wheel-drive, automatic climate control, “smart key’’ technology, touch-screen navigation, backup cameras, LED headlights, acoustic glass, surround-sound stereo, and leather seat stitching.
  
  If those were the minimum requirements every car had to meet before it could be sold, would you commute to and from work every day in a Lexus LS 460 or some other luxury vehicle? Well, you might, if the steep price wasn’t an obstacle. But it’s more likely you wouldn’t be driving at all. If the government barred you from buying anything but a high-end car, you’d probably have no choice but to rely on the bus or subway, or to find a job closer to home.
  
  What is true of transportation is true of everything else: Increase the number of amenities that a product or service must include, and more consumers will be unable to pay for that product or service.
  
  That is why one of the simplest strategies for making health insurance more affordable is to reduce the minimum number of benefits that insurers are required to cover.
  
  In every state in the union, legislators and regulators drive up the cost of healthcare by making insurance policies more comprehensive. Rather than allow the free market to determine which medical services health plans will cover, states force consumers to pay for an array of covered benefits they may not need or want. For example, 45 states require insurance policies to include treatment for alcoholism and 34 mandate coverage of drug abuse treatment. Contraceptives are covered in 31 states, as are hairpieces in 10 states, and in-vitro fertilization in 13 states. Consumers who buy health insurance are often forced to pay for coverage of services they may consider highly dubious, such as acupuncture (benefits are mandatory in 11 states), chiropractic (46 states), osteopathy (22 states), and naturopathy (four states).
  
  Forty years ago, there were only a handful of benefits that health policies were required by law to cover. Today, the Council for Affordable Health Insurance identifies an astonishing 1,961 mandated benefits and providers. While any one mandate may not add appreciably to the price of an insurance policy, in the aggregate their cost is huge. The Cato Institute, citing the Congressional Budget Office, estimates that state regulations increase the cost of health insurance by 15 percent. And since “each percentage-point rise in health insurance costs increases the number of uninsured by 300,000 people,’’ as scholars John Cogan, Glenn Hubbard, and Daniel Kessler point out, it is clear that the proliferation of insurance mandates is one reason why millions of Americans are uninsured.
  
  Yet instead of pruning back this thicket of compulsory benefits, lawmakers are planting even more of them.

• I liked this post: The Hot Waittress Index. From the post:

  The indicator I prefer is the Hot Waitress Index: The hotter the waitresses, the weaker the economy. In flush times, there is a robust market for hotness. Selling everything from condos to premium vodka is enhanced by proximity to pretty young people (of both sexes) who get paid for providing this service. That leaves more-punishing work, like waiting tables, to those with less striking genetic gifts. But not anymore.
  
  To be actually useful, of course, the Hot Waitress Index must be a leading indicator, and there is good reason to believe that it is. Employment is generally thought to lag behind economic recovery, which is to say that jobless rates remain elevated, and even climb, after a recession has technically ended. But hotness occupies a privileged place in the employment picture. As a commodity that’s fairly cheap, historically effective as a marketing tool, and available on a freelance basis, hotness will likely be back in demand long before your average Michigan autoworker is. Or the rest of us, for that matter.

• I was listening to last week's episode of This American Life while on my long run, and the theme of that week's show was Fine Print. It talked about various ways in which the fine print really makes a huge difference. The first part of the show talked about how in Iran, the government is coercing and torturing people into giving false confessions about their involvement in supporting insurgency, saying things like the US is sponsoring and promoting the recent uproar that has gone on since they had their elections. I loved the story, but it made me think about a broader issue.
  
  As anyone who reads this blog with regularity knows, I love This American Life. Love it love it, but I can't pretend that it's not moderate-liberal in its leanings. For the most part, I think the stories stay away from those kinds of issues so I don't have much trouble overlooking the politics, but this was one case that I thought was kind of interesting.
  
  People everywhere are upset about what has come about in Iran, Democrats/Republicans, white/black, everyone. There are no limitations on the outrage, and rightfully so. But wasn't it just within the last few years that liberals were welcoming Ahmadinejad with open arms onto university campuses? When this guy was talking about wiping Israel off the map, it wasn't a big deal, but somehow when they're crushing down opposition within their own country, all of a sudden it becomes so much worse? How is it not worse for a nation to openly declare that they are for the annihilation of a different country, but govern their own people with a similar heavy hand? Isn't the government of Iran free to govern their own people as they see fit? I know my logic isn't completely sound here, but I think it's a point worth considering. I'm sure most people who support the Iranian opposition also voted for Obama. I wonder how they're feeling now.
  
  With respect to the radio show, I thought it was interesting that they could be so honest and forthright about how awful that government is to their own people, but only now because it's politically convenient to do so. Kind of annoying.