Economist Paul Krugman gives us a heads-up on the lies we're going to (continue to) hear about the U.S. health care system:
The United States spends far more on health care per person than any other nation. Yet we have lower life expectancy than most other rich countries. Furthermore, every other advanced country provides all its citizens with health insurance; only in America is a large fraction of the population uninsured or underinsured.
You might think that these facts would make the case for major reform of America’s health care system—reform that would involve, among other things, learning from other countries' experience—irrefutable. Instead, however, apologists for the status quo offer a barrage of excuses for our system's miserable performance.
It's worth a read.
The former Illinois governor goes to jail tomorrow:
U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens today rejected former Gov. George Ryan's final, long-shot bid to remain free on bail while he fights to overturn his corruption conviction before the nation's highest court.
The ruling means Ryan must report to a federal prison camp in Oxford, Wis., by 5 p.m. Wednesday to begin serving his 6½-year sentence.
A federal jury convicted Ryan in April 2006 on charges that, as secretary of state and governor, he doled out sweetheart deals to co-defendant Lawrence Warner and other friends, and used state resources and employees for political gain.
Former Illinois Governor George Ryan will join a growing club of incarcerated Illinois politicians next Wednesday:
A federal appeals court today denied former Gov. George Ryan's bid to remain free on bail while he asks the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his corruption conviction.
The ruling by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago increases the likelihood that Ryan must report to prison by Nov. 7. He can still ask the U.S. Supreme Court to extend his bail, however.
The Chicago Tribune ran an editorial Sunday calling for a recall amendment to the Illinois constitution. My response:
Regardless of what you think of Blagojevich's performance, Illinois needs a recall amendment like a fish needs a bicycle.
Illinois has two perfectly adequate constitutional mechanisms for removing a governor: election and impeachment. If the governor is really all that bad, let the legislature impeach him. If not, we'll have a referendum on his performance soon enough—and his critics can moot someone else to run against him then. Either way, the legislature and courts are more than sufficiently powerful to prevent him doing severe harm to the state, as they have prevented other governors in the past. (They've even prevented other governors from doing good things for the state. Forestalling damage should be easy by comparison.)
Our government is designed to be responsive to the will of the people but resistent to the whims of the mob. Removing an executive from office by popular recall may seem like the epitome of democracy, but as the founders of the U.S. knew well, and as many millions of others have learned around the world, it's actually fundamentally undemocratic.
The recall of Gray Davis was essentially a legally-sanctioned coup d'état by a well-financed but very small minority. Had he served out his term, the publication of Enron's malfeasance in manipulating California's energy supply would have vindicated him in time to let him stand a fair election against his critics. He may not have been re-elected; but we'll never know, because he didn't have a fair fight.
If you think the governor should be removed from office, tell your state representative and state senator, who have to stand for re-election before he does. If there's sufficient outcry, the House will act; if not, or if the House fails to act despite the will of the people, we have the opportunity to replace the lot of them next year. Meantime, we shouldn't sacrifice democracy for mob rule.
He nails it:
People claim to be shocked by the Bush administration's general incompetence. But disinterest in good government has long been a principle of modern conservatism. In "The Conscience of a Conservative," published in 1960, Barry Goldwater wrote that "I have little interest in streamlining government or making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size."
People claim to be shocked at the Bush administration's efforts to disenfranchise minority groups, under the pretense of combating voting fraud. But Reagan opposed the Voting Rights Act, and as late as 1980 he described it as "humiliating to the South."
Above all, people claim to be shocked by the Bush administration's authoritarianism, its disdain for the rule of law. But a full half-century has passed since The National Review proclaimed that "the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail," and dismissed as irrelevant objections that might be raised after "consulting a catalogue of the rights of American citizens, born Equal"—presumably a reference to the document known as the Constitution of the United States.
Remember: unless you're rich, white, male, and a bigot, the Greedy Old Party is against you. (If you're middle-class, white, male, and a bigot, they're also using you like cheap toilet paper.)
"Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms.... But a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than a riot."—Robert Heinlein, Friday.
Happy primary election season!
A larger-than-usual bunch of news stories piqued my interest this morning:
Terrorism only works if people allow themselves to be terrorized. People like, for example, shoppers in New Haven, Conn.:
Two people who sprinkled flour in a parking lot to mark a trail for their offbeat running club [the Hash House Harriers] inadvertently caused a bioterrorism scare and now face a felony charge.
New Haven ophthalmologist Daniel Salchow, 36, and his sister, Dorothee, 31, who is visiting from Hamburg, Germany, were both charged with first-degree breach of peace, a felony.
The siblings set off the scare while organizing a run for a local chapter of the Hash House Harriers, a worldwide group that bills itself as a "drinking club with a running problem."
...
Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said the city plans to seek restitution from the Salchows, who are due in court Sept. 14. "You see powder connected by arrows and chalk, you never know," she said. "It could be a terrorist, it could be something more serious. We're thankful it wasn't, but there were a lot of resources that went into figuring that out."
Maybe there's something about New England that prevents the police there from exercising common sense (see, e.g., blinking advertisements).
Update, 15:20 CDT: Security expert Bruce Schneier has declared this the "stupidest terrorist overreaction yet."
We're looking forward to another lovely day in Chicago: 25°C, sunny, light breeze, crystal-clear skies. What more perfect day to wake up with the news that, not only are the Cubs still hanging on to first place, but also Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has finally resigned, no doubt to spend some quality time with his defense lawyers:
Mr. Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation, submitted his to President Bush by telephone on Friday, the official said. His decision was not announced immediately announced, the official added, until after the president invited him and his wife to lunch at his ranch near here.
The official who disclosed the resignation today said that the decision was Mr. Gonzales’s and that the president accepted it grudgingly. At the same time, the official acknowledged that the turmoil over Mr. Gonzales had made his continuing as attorney general difficult.
The turmoil has made the job difficult? Kind of like someone shooting his parents and then bemoaning his lot as an orphan, isn't it?
Well, with 512 days and 3 hours (or less) remaining in the worst administration in history, the President can still do enormous harm to the country, but with Gonzales back in Houston he'll now have none of his original cronies to help.
Update, 10:25 CDT: Does anyone else find some irony in his last day being September 17th?
Via Bruce Schneier, a really good article about security theater:
At the time, it seemed reasonable. Richard Reid tried to ignite explosives hidden in his shoe while aboard a December 2001 flight from Paris, so Congress banned butane lighters on planes.
But in retrospect, the costs of the ban outweighed the benefits. Airport retailers had to stop selling lighters. Lighter vendor Zippo Manufacturing Co. laid off more than 100 workers in part because of the prohibition. Transportation Security Administration screeners at one point had to confiscate 30,000 lighters every day, quadrupling the amount of garbage the agency had to dispose of. TSA even had to hire a contractor to help with all the extra trash.
Welcome to homeland security, where everyone has an incentive to exaggerate threats. A Congress member whose district includes a port has little to lose and much to gain by playing up the potential for container-borne terrorism. A city with a dam talks up the need to protect critical infrastructure. A company selling weapons-detection technology stresses the vulnerability of commercial aviation. A civil servant evaluating homeland security grant applications has an interest in over-estimating dangers that might be addressed by grantees rather than denying funding and risk blame in the event of a disaster.