Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Saving Teaching Jobs
San Diego Unified School District has been facing major budget cuts for months, which has much to do with California’s multi-billion budget shortfall, and all of the talk, every word of the talk, is about the loss of teachers’ jobs. Unbeknownst to any of us, the purpose of our school system changed from education of the young to provision of employment for school teachers.
Last week the school district “reached agreement with the teachers’ union” and the resulting headline was “1500 Teachers Jobs Saved.”
I have to confess to you that the fact that 1500 teachers are keeping their jobs does not, in itself, delight me at all, because I do not support taxation for the purpose of providing jobs for teachers. I do support taxation for the purpose of providing a quality education for the youth of my community and the employment of teachers is secondary to that purpose. If children can be educated with 1500 fewer teachers, then I’m all for that.
If, on the other hand, the loss of those 1500 teachers reduces the quality of education provided for our youth, then I would oppose losing those teachers. That is not, however, what the discussion has been about or what the headline reads. If the discussion had been about the quality of education and the headline read, “Quality of education preserved by retaining 1500 teachers,” then I would cheer lustily.
This is another reflection, I think, on the part of teachers and the NEA, of “it’s all about me.”
Last week the school district “reached agreement with the teachers’ union” and the resulting headline was “1500 Teachers Jobs Saved.”
I have to confess to you that the fact that 1500 teachers are keeping their jobs does not, in itself, delight me at all, because I do not support taxation for the purpose of providing jobs for teachers. I do support taxation for the purpose of providing a quality education for the youth of my community and the employment of teachers is secondary to that purpose. If children can be educated with 1500 fewer teachers, then I’m all for that.
If, on the other hand, the loss of those 1500 teachers reduces the quality of education provided for our youth, then I would oppose losing those teachers. That is not, however, what the discussion has been about or what the headline reads. If the discussion had been about the quality of education and the headline read, “Quality of education preserved by retaining 1500 teachers,” then I would cheer lustily.
This is another reflection, I think, on the part of teachers and the NEA, of “it’s all about me.”
Interesting Omission
The LA Times is reporting that Pakistan has reopened roads to traffic into Afghanistan because the United States issued an apology for the attack on a Pakistani outpost which killed 24 of its soldiers and, apparently, the two nations reached agreement that no fees would be charged for the traffic.
That’s all just peachy, but earlier reports about the issue have said that Pakistan was demanding an end to the American drone strikes in its country as a condition of reopening roads for traffic, and we were refusing to consider doing that. The article, like all the other articles that I have read on this news, does not mention drone strikes, implying by omission that they were never an issue in the negotiations. That’s rather interesting, isn’t it?
That’s all just peachy, but earlier reports about the issue have said that Pakistan was demanding an end to the American drone strikes in its country as a condition of reopening roads for traffic, and we were refusing to consider doing that. The article, like all the other articles that I have read on this news, does not mention drone strikes, implying by omission that they were never an issue in the negotiations. That’s rather interesting, isn’t it?
Above Self Interest
Getting married was one of the best things that ever happened to me, and I’m not thinking about the obvious reasons for the purpose of this post. They apply, I certainly enjoy being married, but I’m using that relationship to discuss something different.
Being married gives me an almost daily exercise in being part of something bigger than myself. It lends a sense of responsibility, and a deeper sense of purpose. Decisions are no longer about what serves me, or what feels good to me, but are about what is best for the marriage.
In reading and participating in political discussion, I sense a lack of the larger perspective in our national dialog. “Health care reform is good,” I read, “because I spent many years without insurance.” Or we vote for a politician who proposes to lower taxes because, “I don’t want to pay taxes.” We claim we are selfless and thinking of others by saying that we support Social Security because, “My mother depends on it to live.”
If everyone had that perception no person would ever join the military and go in harm’s way in defense of his nation, but the number of people willing to do that is down to less than one percent. Barely half of us even vote.
CBS News has a “formula” for the news item that they follow virtually every time. They give the headline, and then they bring it down to one individual. “The East Coast is experiencing major floods,” they say, and then the camera shows a woman on the street. “Jane Doe has lived in her home for seventeen years…” An entire coast is underwater, and they are making it about one person.
If nothing else, the formula has become trite, but one person is not a national concern. In focusing on the “human interest,” they do not show the scope of the widespread disaster unfolding and affecting entire states.
I think we should have universal health care, but not because of anything to do with me. I believe we should have it because it would strengthen our economy if it was implemented without the government borrowing money. For that reason, my taxes should be raised to pay for it.
Furthermore, because of the current state of government finances, I intend to vote against anyone who promises to cut my taxes at this point. How many liberals have similar thoughts, especially the part about taxes?
Being married gives me an almost daily exercise in being part of something bigger than myself. It lends a sense of responsibility, and a deeper sense of purpose. Decisions are no longer about what serves me, or what feels good to me, but are about what is best for the marriage.
In reading and participating in political discussion, I sense a lack of the larger perspective in our national dialog. “Health care reform is good,” I read, “because I spent many years without insurance.” Or we vote for a politician who proposes to lower taxes because, “I don’t want to pay taxes.” We claim we are selfless and thinking of others by saying that we support Social Security because, “My mother depends on it to live.”
If everyone had that perception no person would ever join the military and go in harm’s way in defense of his nation, but the number of people willing to do that is down to less than one percent. Barely half of us even vote.
CBS News has a “formula” for the news item that they follow virtually every time. They give the headline, and then they bring it down to one individual. “The East Coast is experiencing major floods,” they say, and then the camera shows a woman on the street. “Jane Doe has lived in her home for seventeen years…” An entire coast is underwater, and they are making it about one person.
If nothing else, the formula has become trite, but one person is not a national concern. In focusing on the “human interest,” they do not show the scope of the widespread disaster unfolding and affecting entire states.
I think we should have universal health care, but not because of anything to do with me. I believe we should have it because it would strengthen our economy if it was implemented without the government borrowing money. For that reason, my taxes should be raised to pay for it.
Furthermore, because of the current state of government finances, I intend to vote against anyone who promises to cut my taxes at this point. How many liberals have similar thoughts, especially the part about taxes?
Monday, July 2, 2012
Prescient Public?
The USA Today headline today reads, “Tiger Woods win Sunday sends TV rating soaring.” More on that in a minute, after we look at another headline on a stock car racing online website that was similar; “Dale Earnhardt win sends television ratings sky high.”
So, how many people knew on Saturday that those wins were going to happen and therefor tuned in on Sunday to watch them?
The Woods win has some basis in fact, since he was within one stroke of the lead on Saturday, but he had to gain two strokes to win, so it was no certainty that anyone tuning in to the match was going to be watching a Tiger Woods victory. A headline reading “Tiger Woods Saturday challenge for win sends Sunday ratings soaring” might be accurate, but ratings do not go up after a golfer wins a golf match.
And the race won by Dale Earnhardt Junior was his first win in several years. Anyone tuning in to the race expecting to see him win, as opposed to wanting to see him win, needs to have their head examined. The idea that the television viewing audience for that race was larger because Dale Earnhardt Jr. won it is absurd.
So, how many people knew on Saturday that those wins were going to happen and therefor tuned in on Sunday to watch them?
The Woods win has some basis in fact, since he was within one stroke of the lead on Saturday, but he had to gain two strokes to win, so it was no certainty that anyone tuning in to the match was going to be watching a Tiger Woods victory. A headline reading “Tiger Woods Saturday challenge for win sends Sunday ratings soaring” might be accurate, but ratings do not go up after a golfer wins a golf match.
And the race won by Dale Earnhardt Junior was his first win in several years. Anyone tuning in to the race expecting to see him win, as opposed to wanting to see him win, needs to have their head examined. The idea that the television viewing audience for that race was larger because Dale Earnhardt Jr. won it is absurd.
Mandate and Enforcement
I have seen a couple of arguments that, in ruling “Obamacare’s” individual mandate’s penalty a “tax,” the Supreme Court actually rendered its own ruling invalid, because it is well established law that no tax can be challenged in court until someone has actually paid that tax. Therefor, the reasoning goes, if the mandate is a tax the Court should have delayed ruling until someone was charged the tax, paid it and then brought suit.
Happily, very few have made this argument, because they are wrong.
The Supreme Court did not rule that the tax itself was constitutional, merely that the law was constitutional because it was imposing a tax, which Congress is empowered by the constitution to do. After the law goes into effect and someone pays what the Court has declared to be a tax, the constitutionality of the tax itself can still be challenged; probably will be.
That suit might get complicated though, by the clause in the law which says that no one who has thepenalty tax imposed upon them and who refuses to pay the penalty tax, can be punished for not paying it, nor can any efforts be made to collect it.
Needless to say, the mandate was controversial during the ”health care reform” debate, and the idiots in Congress who wanted it did all sorts of game playing to get it included over the objections of the various idiots who did not want it. Calling it a penalty rather than a tax was one of those ploys, and a significant battle was waged over that wording, which the Supreme Court rendered moot in a matter of a few minutes.
Another way to get it included was to make it a very small penalty, tax, whatever. The thinking was that they didn’t want to punish people for not having insurance, but were willing to bow to the inevitable if the punishment wasn’t too severe. They overlooked the probability that if the penalty was sufficiently less than the cost of insurance, then anyone of intelligence would just pay the penalty and forgo insurance until they got sick, but…
Not satisfied with having whittled the penalty, which it still was at the time because the Supreme Court had not yet entered the picture, the anti-mandate idiots went one step further and managed to insert language which prevented the penalty, small as it was, from being enforced. This made everybody happy. The Congressional idiots who wanted a mandate could say they had one, and the idiots who didn’t could say, “Yeah, there's a mandate, but so what because it’s meaningless.”
Which has to make me wonder what the fuss is all about.
Happily, very few have made this argument, because they are wrong.
The Supreme Court did not rule that the tax itself was constitutional, merely that the law was constitutional because it was imposing a tax, which Congress is empowered by the constitution to do. After the law goes into effect and someone pays what the Court has declared to be a tax, the constitutionality of the tax itself can still be challenged; probably will be.
That suit might get complicated though, by the clause in the law which says that no one who has the
Needless to say, the mandate was controversial during the ”health care reform” debate, and the idiots in Congress who wanted it did all sorts of game playing to get it included over the objections of the various idiots who did not want it. Calling it a penalty rather than a tax was one of those ploys, and a significant battle was waged over that wording, which the Supreme Court rendered moot in a matter of a few minutes.
Another way to get it included was to make it a very small penalty, tax, whatever. The thinking was that they didn’t want to punish people for not having insurance, but were willing to bow to the inevitable if the punishment wasn’t too severe. They overlooked the probability that if the penalty was sufficiently less than the cost of insurance, then anyone of intelligence would just pay the penalty and forgo insurance until they got sick, but…
Not satisfied with having whittled the penalty, which it still was at the time because the Supreme Court had not yet entered the picture, the anti-mandate idiots went one step further and managed to insert language which prevented the penalty, small as it was, from being enforced. This made everybody happy. The Congressional idiots who wanted a mandate could say they had one, and the idiots who didn’t could say, “Yeah, there's a mandate, but so what because it’s meaningless.”
Which has to make me wonder what the fuss is all about.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Spurious Argument
Democrats are, as mentioned here before, delighted that “Obamacare” was upheld by the Supreme Court, but Obama can’t really use that in his reelection campaign, because the majority of Americans wanted the keystone of the legislation (the individual mandate) to be overturned. I, of course, am less concerned about trivia such as that than I am about palming off health insurance extension as “health care reform,” but liberals call me dirty names whenever I bring that up. Their defenses range from nonsensical to illogical.
The main defense seems to be, “Well I spent several years without health insurance and being sick was terrible, so how can you say that the ACA is a bad thing?”
Well, first of all, I didn’t say it was a bad thing, I said that it wasn’t what we needed to do. I argued that we needed to fix a broken system, not merely include more people in the system and leave it broken. Further, I spent some 18 years without health insurance myself, but I don’t think that my personal needs should be the determinant for national policy; not everything is about me.
The common welfare and the sum of individual welfares are not the same thing. Ideally, we would put an armed guard in front of every house in every city 24/365 and assure that no one is ever murdered in their sleep. That is the maximum assurance of individual welfares. Can any city, can the nation afford to do that? Of course not.
So a story of one person who, in my case, had an unhealed splintered fracture of the fibula for eight years which caused serious pain when walking is not a matter of national concern. It simply cannot be. It concerned me for eight years, but I did not, and do not, expect that Congress or the President of The United States should give one single thought to my stupid fibula.
The other argument is that it’s perfectly okay to pass mediocre legislation because it is a beginning that will be built up over time into the perfect program, just as Social Security and Medicare were.
Sadly, no. Those two programs were passed with very limited coverage and over time the coverage has been expanded, but the programs’ natures have not been changed in any significant way. The numbers have changed to accommodate the economy, but the functionality of both programs is precisely the same today as they were when initially passed, and the only change is that eligibility has been expanded to cover many more people.
The ACA is already designed to be universal and, while some people will slip through the cracks, the entire population is covered by it in the form in which it was initially passed. Proponents are claiming not that it will expand, as Social Security and Medicare have, but that it will automatically morph into different functionality, which is by no means certain.
If you have a wildfire which is covering a small area, you can assume that it will spread to cover a larger area. There is a natural impetus for it to do so. But the argument that ACA will become what it should be is more like saying that one has installed an automatic fertilization system which covers his entire garden and is hoping that it will gradually, over time, become an automatic irrigation system. There is no natural impetus for it to do that.
My argument is not that we should not have done the ACA; my question is why did we settle for this action without even trying to do anything better first? This as a second choice after we tried to do something better and failed, sure, but why settle for this first?
"Because," you say, "something better would not have passed." How do we know that when we did not even make the attempt?
The main defense seems to be, “Well I spent several years without health insurance and being sick was terrible, so how can you say that the ACA is a bad thing?”
Well, first of all, I didn’t say it was a bad thing, I said that it wasn’t what we needed to do. I argued that we needed to fix a broken system, not merely include more people in the system and leave it broken. Further, I spent some 18 years without health insurance myself, but I don’t think that my personal needs should be the determinant for national policy; not everything is about me.
The common welfare and the sum of individual welfares are not the same thing. Ideally, we would put an armed guard in front of every house in every city 24/365 and assure that no one is ever murdered in their sleep. That is the maximum assurance of individual welfares. Can any city, can the nation afford to do that? Of course not.
So a story of one person who, in my case, had an unhealed splintered fracture of the fibula for eight years which caused serious pain when walking is not a matter of national concern. It simply cannot be. It concerned me for eight years, but I did not, and do not, expect that Congress or the President of The United States should give one single thought to my stupid fibula.
The other argument is that it’s perfectly okay to pass mediocre legislation because it is a beginning that will be built up over time into the perfect program, just as Social Security and Medicare were.
Sadly, no. Those two programs were passed with very limited coverage and over time the coverage has been expanded, but the programs’ natures have not been changed in any significant way. The numbers have changed to accommodate the economy, but the functionality of both programs is precisely the same today as they were when initially passed, and the only change is that eligibility has been expanded to cover many more people.
The ACA is already designed to be universal and, while some people will slip through the cracks, the entire population is covered by it in the form in which it was initially passed. Proponents are claiming not that it will expand, as Social Security and Medicare have, but that it will automatically morph into different functionality, which is by no means certain.
If you have a wildfire which is covering a small area, you can assume that it will spread to cover a larger area. There is a natural impetus for it to do so. But the argument that ACA will become what it should be is more like saying that one has installed an automatic fertilization system which covers his entire garden and is hoping that it will gradually, over time, become an automatic irrigation system. There is no natural impetus for it to do that.
My argument is not that we should not have done the ACA; my question is why did we settle for this action without even trying to do anything better first? This as a second choice after we tried to do something better and failed, sure, but why settle for this first?
"Because," you say, "something better would not have passed." How do we know that when we did not even make the attempt?
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