Coyote Blog

Thank god we have a "liberal" president, or else we might all have to worry about our civil rights and abuse of power:

Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson moved the Obama administration into new territory from a civil liberties perspective. Asked by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) the politically difficult but entirely fair question about whether terrorism detainees acquitted in courts could be released in the United States, Johnson said that "as a matter of legal authority," the administration's powers to detain someone under the law of war don't expire for a detainee after he's acquitted in court. "If you have authority under the law of war to detain someone" under the Supreme Court's Hamdi ruling, "that is true irrespective of what happens on the prosecution side."

Most all the world pays a marginal cost for drugs, medical devices, and procedures that does not come close to repaying the development effort that went into those products.  Further, most of the world has regimented medical systems that have very strong immune systems against any sort of innovation.

As a result, almost all medical innovation occurs and is paid for in the United States, with the rest of the world acting as a free rider.  Sure, some Swiss or Japanese firms still develop a few drugs, but most of those efforts are still justified by profits in the US market.

To this end, Megan McArdle had my favorite quote of the day:

we're still driving quite a bit of product innovation.  Our messy, organic, wasteful, unfair, irrational system allows experimentation, and they [Europeans] cherry pick the best results.  If we stopped doing this, their system would stop looking so good.

This is not to mention that the US tends to act as the capacity of last resort for desperate people in other countries who either can no longer tolerate the wait for a procedure or are not allowed by their country to have a certain procedure or drug.

The new bypass bridge at Hoover Dam.  Photo courtesy of the Mail Online.

Since 1972, oil company executives have, like clockwork, been dragged up to Washington every five years to defend themselves against charges that they have cartelized the oil industry with the express purpose of limiting supply and driving up prices to consumers.  Over the last 10 years, and particularly post-Katrina, scrutiny has fallen heavily on US refiners to justify refined product supply shortfalls and resulting price spikes.

So, after years of demagoguing oil companies for purposefully limiting refining capacity and output to drive up gasoline prices, Democrats in Congress are on the verge of passing Waxman-Markey, which will have the very focused and predictable result of... limiting US refining output and driving up gas prices.  In fact, the only possible way it will achieve its goals of limiting CO2 output is if it is wildly successful in reducing gasoline supply and driving up gas prices.  Amazing.

Yet more proor that what is never OK for the [private] goose is always OK for the [public] gander.

Chris Horner of NRO used this Far Side cartoon as a good way to illustrate why many large corporations have jumped on the Waxman-Markey bandwagon:

Waxman-Markey is not climate or energy policy, its a pillar in Obama's attempt to build a European-style corporate state, where a clique of large unions, large corporations, and selected politicians run the state to their own mutual benefit.

PS-  I'm not buying the Goldman Sachs as trilateral commission conspiracy in Horners article.  But the direct line from Enron to the current cap-and-trade bill is an important one that is under-reported.  Enron was on the cap-and-trade lobbying bandwagon very early on.

I thought this Kenneth Chang column in the NY Times was pretty interesting.  Much like we can sometimes spot plagiarism by spotting where spelling errors have been reproduced, apparently errors in our DNA give clear pointers to our evolution from other species.

All my complaints about the NY Times not-withstanding, I think if the Times were to disappear, I would miss their science reporting the most.

I am back in the USA, but I am missing my daily dose of cricket each evening.  I found watching cricket incredibly relaxing in the evening.  Despite common perception, it is not a difficult sport to understand -- it just has a vocabulary all its own.

This is actually a pretty big week in British cricket, as the biennial Ashes matches between Australia and England begin on Wednesday.  Apparently, Australia has pretty much owned England over the years, with the exception of an exciting victory by England four years ago.   The only way I have found to watch it in the US is via a pay internet site associated with Sky TV.  Anyone have any better ways?

Cricket for American Baseball Fans

As a public service, here is my quick description of cricket in terms American baseball fans will understand.  This will leave out some details and arcana (just as one can easily describe the basics of baseball without mentioning catcher interference or running on a dropped third strike).  Commenters are free to get all over me with exaggerated anger for any small mistakes I make.  Note that I purposefully am using some American baseball terms for things in order to make the translation easier.

The cricket field is a large oval (of varying sizes) with two wickets or stumps about 66 feet apart in the middle of the field (about 6 feet longer than the distance from an American pitching mound to home plate) (picture).  Think of the two stumps as two home plates separated by a single base path.   This is a useful way to think of it because herein we get to the part that is most confusing to Americans:  At any one time, there are two batsmen, one at each end.  And, there are two bowlers (the equivalent of pitchers), again one on each end.  If you think of it as two home plates, each with its own batter and pitcher alternating play, you get the idea.

Play progresses in a series of overs, which is 6 balls or pitches in a row.  A single bowler will bowl 6 balls, or one over, from his end, and then play reverses and the other bowler at the other end will bowl six balls.  This continues until all the batters on the team are out (more in a minute).  As in baseball, bowlers get tired and get replaced over time.  Much like high school or little league baseball, bowlers are not specialists but are fielders who are rotated in and out of the bowling position from the field.  Again, just like American baseball, bowlers can be straight ahead speed specialists or they can be spinners (ie throw a variety of curving balls).  Bowlers generally bounce the ball into the batsman (though they don't have to), as they can then take advantage of funny hops off the uneven playing surface and because the bounce can accentuate the effects of spin.  Unlike American pitchers who are fixed to a spot on the mound, cricket bowlers can make long running starts to their bowling.

Since there are two batsmen, whoever is facing the current bowler is the active batter. In addition to the bowlers and the keeper (like an American catcher) there are 9 fielders dispersed 360 degrees around the batter.  Only the catcher wears something like an American-style leather glove -- all the other fielders are bare-handed.

OK, here is the second thing that befuddles American baseball fans:  Batsmen continue to bat and score runs until they are out - even if this takes hours and scores of pitches.   There are no ball and strike counts that limit the time batting.  If the batter hits a short ground ball to a fielder, a sure out in American baseball, he does not have to run in cricket and therefore cannot get out.  And once he hits and gets some runs, he still keeps batting.  These are all differences from American baseball.

When the batsman gets a hit, he has a choice to run.   If he chooses to run, both he and his partner (remember there are two batsman at a time) run to the opposite stump.  Making it safely is one run.    If the ball is hit well enough, he may run back and forth for more than one run.  If the ball rolls all the way to the "outfield" wall, it is automatically scored as four runs.  If the ball clears the "outfield" fence on the fly (the equivalent of an American home run) it is automatically 6 runs.

Note that if the batter runs an even number of bases, he ends up back at the stump where he started and he will be the one to face the bowler on the next pitch.  If he scores an odd number of runs, the other batsman will now face the bowler.  There is some strategy involved in this, as it gives the batting team some leeway to determine which of its two batters will face the current bowler.

There are a number of arcane ways to get a batter out, but the most common are the following:

• Bowled:  The ball hits and breaks the wicket.  First and foremost, then, a batter is defensive.  He needs to make contact with any ball that is headed for the wicket.  If any part of the batsman hits the wicket (eg he hits it with his bat or with his leg while running) this is also an out.
• Leg before wicket (LBW):  If the ball hits the batters leg, and the referee rules the ball would have hit the stump, the batter is out
• Run out:  When the batter chooses to run (and this is a choice) he can be "thrown out" in baseball parlance if a fielder throws the ball back and hits the stump  (or someone tags the stump with the ball) before the runner gets back to the wicket (the equivalent to a force-out in baseball).  I have not watched a lot of cricket, but I have never seen anyone run out.  Batsmen tend to be pretty conservative in going for runs this way, as a single out is far more devastating than in American baseball so they take fewer chances.  Its better to live and bat some more than try to stretch out a single extra run.  Particularly since a good batter can score 50 or even 100 runs in a single at-bat (or inning) before getting out.
• Caught:  If the batter hits the ball in the air and it is caught, the batter is out.  There are several fielders typically concentrated just behind the batter as catching the equivalent of an American foul tip backwards (there is no foul territory in cricket)  seems a particularly rich source of caught balls.

Batters therefor face a tension.  They must guard the wicket at all costs, and the safest way to do so is to hit a lot of ground balls to avoid being caught out.  But the batter also needs to score, and so must sometimes take some chances in order to score runs by putting the ball in the air.  The best batters seem to be the ones who can hit the ball hard on the ground and consciously seek out gaps in the fielders.  The best equivalent in baseball I can think of is batters who are good at hitting the infield gaps on hit and run plays.

An inning is the process of having an entire team bat and be put out once.  In a test match, typically over four days, each team might have two innings.  There are a number of rules variations that might end innings sooner on time or number of overs.

A note on scoring:  When watching TV, they still flash a lot of stats I do not frankly understand.  But the most common will be a score after a test match might say England was 292 and 165.  This means they had 292 runs in their first innings and 165 in their second.  For an inning in progress, the score will look something like this:  164-4.  This means that the team batting has so far scored 164 runs and has had four batsmen put out.

There are many other unique terms (I personally like "maiden" as a particularly apt term for a no-run over) but I think this is a good start.   There is a lot of arcana in test cricket I don't yet understand, but none of it stops me from enjoying the games.   Enjoy.  That is, if one could ever get any cricket on American TV.

Bruce McQuain has a really good post debunking the meme that Medicare overhead costs are lower than those of private insurers.  You should read the whole post, but the short answer is:

• Medicare participants are older and less healthy than those insured privately, so the denominator for their overhead ratio is much higher
• Comparing overhead costs per plan participant, Medicare costs are higher than private
• The comparison is apples and oranges, because private firms pay account differently than does the government
• Lower Medicare overhead has tradeoffs, as it lets fraud through which is not counted as a cost

I can't add to Bruce's post, except to say that as someone in the business of trying to privatize government functions, we see the apples and oranges problem all the time.  I am constantly having cost discussions with government bodies, and they frequently leave out most of the following when they compute their costs:

• Insurance  (e.g. liability, property).  They say the government is self-insured, but the government does not charge its divisions any cost for this implicit guarantee.  I have to pay real money for it.
• State / local taxes.  Private companies have to collect and pay many state and local sales, excise, and property taxes that the feds do not pay.
• Pensions / retirement benefits.  The government grants fat pensions and retirement medical benefits to its employees but does not accrue or put any funds away in the present to pay for these.  Private companies do  (and in fact would go to jail for not doing so).
• Capital spending and rent.  This varies by entity, but most government bodies do not see full depreciation of the capital assets they are using in their budgets.  Ditto for the value of the space they are occupying - they often get valuable space rent and/or depreciation free.
• Services from other government divisions.  Sometimes transfer prices are charged, and sometimes they are even close to market rates, but most times they are not

We often hear that one of the reasons health care "reform" is necesary in the US is because the uninsured overwhelm emergency rooms.  We hear horror stories of overcrowded emergency rooms with long wait times, which would only be better if we had a national health care system like Canada.

A couple of interesting facts:

Average US emergency room wait time:  4.05 hours

Average Canada emergency room wait time:  8.9 to 23 hours

I confess the numbers are not apples-apples, but they are certainly in the ballpark and highly illustrative.   Have any commenters seen a direct comparison?

Update: OK, the numbers are more apples-apples than I thought.  The US 4 hour number is total time from coming in the door to leaving or getting a bed, the same as the Canadian numbers.  The CNN report linked above got their data from here.

I have written many times about how regulation tends to help the large and well established competitors against smaller companies and potential future market entrants.  Larger companies have the size to pay compliance costs and the political muscle to sway regulation in their direction and co-opt regulatory bodies.  The tobacco settlement, ostensibly aimed at "big tobacco" has done nothing but cement the market leadership of the top brands.  This is why you see some large companies jumping on board cap and trade or health care reform -- for example, Waxman-Markey contains rules that give a particular advantage to certain GE lighting technologies on which it holds patents.

The CPSIA is another such law, and Overlawyered has been all over the story.  Here is what a craft fabricator of handmade dolls (even say your grandma selling at a craft fair) will have to comply with:

"¦Each batch needs a unique identifying number.

However, if in the course of making the products, you have to break into a separate box of buttons that has a separate batch or lot number itself, even if the product is otherwise identical, this is a separate batch and you need a separate new label for it with its own batch number that you assign. "¦ It is conceivable [if you incorporate variations into the product] every item you produce is its own batch and each needs its own number and label. "¦

You will need to do "batch control". You need to create a separate BOM [Bill of Materials] for each batch. You can keep this electronically in a database or spreadsheet. It is my understanding you need to keep these records for three years.

Though it was originally Mattel's problem with lead from China in toys that caused the CPSIA to get passed (Congress always has to "do something" when a story makes the news) do you think it is Mattel or grandma who will be driven out of the business?  In the future, when leftish hippies wail that there are no small manufacturer crafts or locally grown food at their weekend fair, you will know why.

Much more coverage on CPSIA here.

This is a recurring post on Coyote Blog on Memorial Day, but I forgot this year so I will repost it on July 4.  Greetings this year from the Mother Country, from which I will be returning soon.  And let's give a big shout-out to the Dutch, who seldom get much love on this point, but the Dutch perhaps even more than the English really pioneered a lot of things that are important to us - e.g. capitalism, a republic, and tolerance.

I would like to say that Waxman-Markey (the recently passed house bill to make sure everyone has new clothes just like the Emperor's) is one of the worst pieces of legislation ever, resulting from one of the worst legislative processes in memory.  But I am not sure I can, with recent bills like TARP and the stimulus act to compete with.  Nevertheless, it will be bad law if passed, a giant back door step towards creating a European-style corporate state.  The folks over at NRO have read some of the bill (though probably not all) and have 50 low-lights.  Read it all, it is impossible to excerpt -- just one bad provision after another.

Bruce McQuain focuses on the building inspection angle (for the first time the feds are really diving into building codes and inspections, poaching on what typically is state and local turf (just find that in your handy pocket Constitution's enumerated powers).

And Waxman-Markey is indeed a "green-job creator" of a bill "“ it creates an entirely new job category "“ Federal House Inspector. Yes, that's right, in order to sell your house in the future you must passed a federal housing inspection which will certify your home has the minimal energy rating necessary. And if not, you'll be required to bring it up to par by replacing appliances (water heaters, air conditioning, etc) or repairing (leaky windows, etc) whatever the inspector finds before you can put it on the market.

Have a candelabra in your dining room? Don't you dare put any more than a 60 watt bulb in there.  You need to also bone up on what you'll be allowed to do with outdoor lighting, water dispensers, hot tubs and other appliances, not to mention wood burning stoves and water usage.

Oh, and don't forget the installation and siting of shade trees, for which it appears a new bureaucracy is being created.  No kidding, read his post.  He has the text from the bill.

Today I dropped my son off in England for summer school.  As background you need to know that he has lived in brand-new-out-of-the-shrinkwrap American suburbs all of his life.  So it was funny to me to see the look on his face when he was told at the college that his dorm room elevator was broken and might not be fixed for at least a month.  The "WTF?" look was priceless.  I could see him thinking that a one hour outage of infrastructure would be something to comment on back home, but a month??

But the really funny part was when the Dean asked him to check his rooming envelope to see his room number, and he realized the implication of the three digit number that started with "7."  As with most teenage boys, he wanted me gone anyway ASAP, and I was happy to leave him to his independence and avoid the trudge up to his room.  After I left, he still had a small voyage of discovery as he learns that "floor 7" in England is actually euqivilent to "floor 8" in the US.

Far be it for me to interpret actions by politicians cynically.  There is a lot of analysis about why Sarah Palin resigned.  I don't know anything more than most, but here is what I told a friend way back in December:

Sarah Palin should resign now and go on the speaking / pundit circuit.  She is currently in the midst of her 15 minutes of fame and before it passes, she should jump on the opportunity.  In particular, there are all kinds of conservative business execs who will fork out $75,000 a pop to have Palin speak at corporate functions, sales conferences, etc.  This is not even to mention however much Fox is willing to pay her to be a talking head.

I took the Eurostar high-speed train from London to Paris and back today.  It was cool going from London to Paris in 2 hours, particularly when I am not one of the taxpayers who get socked with the subsidies.  A couple of thoughts:

1.  The investment for true high speed rail is simply staggering.  The dedicated track, the complete elimination of all grade crossings, the fences, the terminal facilities (St Pancras had a beautiful but obviously pricey makeover, for example), the trains -- its hard to even imagine the cost, and one quickly becomes convinced high speed rail advocates are either sandbagging the cost or not really talking about true high speed rail.

2.  This moring, my son and I were the only passengers in our car!  Even on Friday afternoon, the busiest time (everyone is coming back home for the weekend), a third of the seats were empty.  I am not sure this thing could make a go of it at 100% capacity but surely it is taking a batch at this utilization.

I have suspected that this was coming, but I guess I have just buried my head in the sand, knowing that I would be taking a complete screwing and not wishing to contemplate it.

Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn., say their plan would preserve employer-sponsored insurance coverage and create an affordable public option for those who need it....

The bill includes a "pay or play" provision that would require employers to provide adequate coverage for their workers or subsidize a system that will.

"Pay or play" would require companies to pay the government $750 per full-time worker per year ($375 for part-timers) if they don't offer health coverage, or if they offer "qualified" coverage but pay less than 60% of workers' premiums. Small businesses that employ fewer than 25 workers would be exempt.   (Via Q&O)

I run a recreation business with about 500 part-time, seasonal employees.  Most of them work for the equivilent of about 1/4 of a year, or about 500 hours.  Almost all are over 70, and already on Medicare and Social Security, so we have no health plan  (no way to get a reasonable plan anyway for a bunch of 70 year olds).

Adding up the numbers, this turns into $187,500 bill I would have to pay to the government for not providing health care to people who already mostly have health care.  I will pay 1/2 the full time rate despite my employees working far less than 1/2 of the year.

One thing you can be sure of -- this may be the final death of my current human resources model.  We typically hire more people, working fewer than 40 hours, because retired folks don't generally want to (or can't) work a full week.   That's been OK, because 4 people working 10 hours a week has always cost me the same as 1 person working 40 hours.   But if I am getting charged $375 per worker whether she/he works 1 hour or 1000, you can bet I am going to hire fewer workers for longer hours.  There are probably a myriad of other implicaitons for my business model,  I just have not yet thought it through.

Apparently, Washington DC politicians think that it is an economic disaster that there are ... too many competitors in the taxicab business.

The District's open, all-are-invited taxicab industry is so saturated with drivers that the entire enterprise is threatened, according to a D.C. Council member who has filed a bill to cap the number of cabs allowed on city streets.

Ward 1 Councilman Jim Graham introduced legislation Tuesday to limit the number of taxicabs in D.C. through either a medallion system, like ones used in New York City and Chicago, or a certification system.

The soaring number of taxicab operators in D.C. "” roughly 8,000, most of whom own their own cars "” is a "pressing and urgent problem," Graham said. There are more licensed drivers in D.C. per capita than any place in the world, he said, and new applicants continue to take the required class, giving them access to the driver exam administered by the D.C. Taxicab Commission. A glut of drivers could jeopardize the chances of any cabbies making an adequate living, Graham has said.

After spending an entire hour trying to get a cab in the middle of a sunny day in Paris, I have not very sympathetic.  Another example of how government licensing is almost always aimed at protecting incumbent businesses from competition, rather than helping the consumer.

Meddle in the economy too much, and investment dries up as entrepeneurs sit on the sidelines to see what's next:

"America isn't hiring precisely because of government policy. Small business owners, who are usually the first into and the first out of the job pool, are standing by the fence and watching. They are paralyzed by regulatory uncertainty. If they hire someone who ends up doing poorly, will they be able to fire that person? Will they have to pay their health care bills after they've been terminated? If so, for how long? Who will pay for all these stimulus checks? If it will turn out to be small business, why would they hire instead of keeping costs low to prepare for the big tax bill? Where will the market move? Are you in the right business or are your clients in a politically disfavored industry? . . . Jobs aren't languishing despite the government's best efforts. They're languishing because of them."

Via Glenn Reynolds

Every traveller to London loves the tube.  There is no better way to get around this great city than with a multi-day Underground pass.

But as a tourist, I have always tended to ride the underground during the day, or late at night after a show.  For the first time, for a couple of days in a row, I have had to brave the tube and Victoria Station at around 6PM.

As a result of this experience, I have a message for "smart growth" urban density-seeking urban planners: please don't do this to me.  Never have I been so uncomfortable, so claustraphobic, and so ready to go Postal than I was in those tremendous moving crowds.  It is a system designed to move a maximum amount of people efficiently, but it does so by forcing human beings to conform to the requirements of the system, rather than the other way around.

Unfortunately, it is exactly this dehumanizing vision that so enraptures modern planners.   It is their mindset that people must adjust to their plans, not the other way around.   It is ironic that most of these people, who would claim to be children of the sixties devoted to individualism, are in fact the architects of the ultimate Tayloristic forced conformity.   I understand that such transit solutions may be necessary in a city as high of a population density as London, but please don't force that kind of density on the rest of us.   If you enjoy it, power to you, you are welcome to live in such an environment.  But leave the rest of us alone who want a car and 2.2 acres.

In particular, the whole notion of "congestion" really struck me.  City planners always talk about fighting congestion, but they always mean traffic on roads (though ironically much of what they do actually increases congestion on roads).  But what about pure human to human congestion?  I would far rather be stuck on a freeway in my air conditioned car listening to the radio than packed in a moving mass of humanity in Victoria Station, packed into a platform waiting for a train, and then packed for half an hour standing in a train straining not to topple over on the person next to me.

You would think I had learned my lesson 35 years ago when I saw the absolutely awful movie "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," probably the worst movie I have ever seen, at least as compared to the profile of its cast.  One needs to be very suspicious of the "lets-make-a-show-from-stringing-together-a-bunch-of-songs-from-one-band" genre, though I guess I was lulled intlo complacency by my enjoying Mamma Mia (the show, not the movie) despite not really being an ABBA fan.

This show was really pretty awful.  The plot and most of the humor was downright embarassing to watch.  Only a fun and rowdy last 20 minutes plus a pretty decent female lead saved the experience -- like Mamma Mia, the best part is the encore, but even more so here.  A bad plot is accented by perhaps the least likeable male protagonist since Thomas Covenant.  This will play quite well in Branson some day.

As a full disclosure, the show has been running for some time and the audience on a Wednesday night was nearly full so I may be in the minority on this one.  But my advice is to skip it and try another show.

The disconnect between the person purchasing and paying for the service and the person receiving the service.  This causes the most friction that piss people off (either against their insurance company or the government for not paying for something or limiting their flexibility).  But is also tends to drive costs up, as people who are ultimately driving most of the health care choices have zero interest in how much it costs.  Via John Stossel (and the Goldwater Institute)

I wrote more on this issue here.

Krispy Kreme in the Harrod's food court.

What's next?  Page 3 girls at the NY Times?  Well, it couldn't hurt...

This, or something like it, seems to be the most popular new sign in London:

I don't know if it is clear from this picture, but I counted 7 cameras on this building in about a 50 40 yard stretch (just above the first floor windows, click to enlarge):

Despite the fact that there is plenty to blog about right now (I think I have 551 unread articles in my feed reader) I will have to ignore much of it as I spend this week in London.  My son is going to summer school at Cambridge and he and I are spending this week together in London.

As is typical of flights to London, we arrived at about 8AM.  I tried to share with my son the virtues of my long experience travelling (telling him to gut it out and not sleep on arrival day) but you know how teenagers are about listening to parental wisdom.  So while he napped, I wandered around some areas of Westminster I had never seen before, including Westminster Cathedral:

I found this to be an odd church.  Byzantine on the outside, the inside is much more reflective of its Victorian heritage, with monolithic brick vaults.  It could have been quite beautiful inside, but the upper reaches of the church, including its domes, are entirely unfinished brick - not even a plaster coating.  The sign said that it was left unfinished for future generations to add murals, but given that about 5 generations have passed since its construction, it is probably time for a bit of decoration.  Right now the ceiling looks like the interior of a coke oven.  I did, however, walk into a mass in progress (which is why I have no interior pictures) and the organ and choir were magnificent.