Coyote Blog

For 15 years I have been a customer of El Dorado bank in a small town in California, just depositing our weekly revenues in the account and sweeping it out from time to time.  When Bank of America closed a few locations we use in other California small towns, it seemed easier to just add additional El Dorado accounts.  WRONG.  I was told today that because we might possibly maybe make three simultaneous deposits at the three banks that total to more than $10,000 in cash in one day, we suddenly are subject to all sorts of disclosure requirements.  I am used to having my privacy raped as a business owner to set up even a simple banking relationship, but now apparently any employee of mine who might make the weekly deposit is going to have to submit all sorts of personal information, including social security number, to the bank just for the ability to deposit money.  We have been doing the same business with El Dorado for nearly 20 years, and suddenly in the little town of Lone Pine, CA, population 2035, we are now treated as presumptive drug dealers and tax evaders.  It aggravates me that I have to put my employees in this position.

It used to be that it was easier to have fewer banking relationships to manage, but now I am thinking the costs may be running the other way, encouraging more smaller banking relationships that don't trigger whatever limits are set for treating customers as presumptive criminals.

I had a really bad day today. 

I have a 18,000 page proposal (actually 18 copies of a 1000 page proposal) due next week.  I had a new color printer ordered from IKON Office Solutions scheduled to arrive last week.  When I got in town this morning, I found no copier, even a week after it was promised.  No call, no warning -- just no printer.  I called and my sales guy had no idea what was going on, despite the fact that I had been adamant that I needed to hit this date.  Apparently, he never even bothered to check the schedule.

Anyway, he promised an immediate call back but never called.  I called him again on his cell at noon and he acted like he had forgotten to check and promised to talk to his boss.  An hour later it was confirmed -- I was not getting my equipment in time for this bid.  I told them they could therefore keep it, and I would call Xerox.  I absolutely cannot stand companies that require me to do constant checking and expediting in order for them to deliver on their promises.  I can't tell you how many times I have been promised an immediate call-back from IKON "within the hour" for service only to have to call again and again over the following days to get any response.  I would not have contracted for this new machine in the first place if I wasn't already locked in an IKON lease they won't let me out of -- this would at least have gotten me a better machine for the money.

In the mean time, I prepared to do the proposal mostly in black and white with bits of color from the laser printer.  I was going to use my high speed B&W copier I had under lease from IKON, and which we were planning to replace with the new machine that never showed up.  I had a technician from IKON out just last week to check it so I knew it was in good shape.  WRONG.

Within minutes of use, the machine began spitting out horrible copies.  Looking inside, it was clear something in the heat-finisher was unraveling and very broken.  I called service and was given an emergency designation and assured of a call in one hour.  Nothing.  So I called again, and was again assured that I would definitely hear from a technician in one hour.  Nothing.  Now, everyone has gone home, and the messages all say they will get back to me on Monday, when it will be too late.  I called my sales person on his cell phone tonight (the one that was begging me a few hours earlier, asking me what he could do to save my business) and was told there was nothing he could do and he had no way of getting in touch with a dispatcher or any real human service person until Monday.  Right, they are willing to do anything for me except what they are supposed to do.

So here I am, with a thousand dollar a month copier that doesn't copy, a color copier that is not here, and the prospect of spending all weekend and a couple grand at Kinko's to get my proposal out.

IKON has been informed that they are now in breach of their service contract and may come by any time and pick up their boat anchor.

Via Q&O:

Again, the grand claim of such a system is it will be more efficient
and less costly. Nary a one of the systems in existence today that I've
read about has lived up to the "efficiency" claim, if access and
waiting times are a measure of efficiency. Every one of them seems to
suffer from lack of access.

Secondly, the "less costly" claim
seems to be accomplished by limiting access and limiting treatment. A
rigid structure with prescribed treatments which disallow deviation.
Imagine the sort of cancer treatment forced on the Japanese attempted
here. Now imagine it with any other chronic disease you can name.

What's the premise at work in a system like that?

Commenting
on the WSJ article, Craig Cantoni, a columnist in Scottsdale, Ariz.,
writes: "Like nationalized health care in other countries, the Japanese
system is based on the premise that the state owns your body."
Therefore, "the state can dictate what medical care can be withheld
from you, either by policy or by making you wait so long for care that
you die in the mean time."

We see all sorts of bloviation
by the left about attacks on our liberty. Yet, for the most part, they
are supportive of the most insidious attack on our liberty you can
imagine with their call for some form of universal health care system
here. And make no mistake, all of the leading Presidential candidates
are talking about an eventual government-run system despite their
obvious spin.

I've said something similar for years.  As one example, I have pointed out that the National Organization of Women's strong support for national health care just demonstrates their utter intellectual bankruptcy, as I wrote here:

What this article really shows is that by going with a single-payer
government system, each of us would be ceding the decisions about our
health care, our bodies, and even lifestyle to the government.  So
surely women's groups, who were at the forefront of fighting against
government intrusion into our decisions about our bodies, is out there
leading the fight against government health care.  WRONG!
Their privacy arguments stand out today as sham libertarian arguments
that applied only narrowly to abortion.  It's clear that as long as
they can get full access to abortion, women's groups are A-OK with
government intrusion into people's decisions about their bodies.

Don't miss their web site, which has sales offers for "Keep your laws of my body" T-shirts right next to appeals to "demand health care for all now."

Reader Robert Hammond, who always sends me good stuff, pointed out this article from the Evening Standard about proposed new health care rules in England.  Frequent readers will know that I have long argued that nationalized or single-payer health care is a Trojan Horse for fascism (and much more here) in the form of micro-management of individual decisions.  If your personal choices that in the past only put yourself at risk now cost other taxpayers money, then those other taxpayers are going to try to redirect your choices.

Failing to follow a healthy lifestyle could lead to free NHS treatment being denied under the Tory plans. 

Patients would be handed "NHS Health Miles Cards" allowing them to earn
reward points for losing weight, giving up smoking, receiving
immunisations or attending regular health screenings.

Like a
supermarket loyalty card, the points could be redeemed as discounts on
gym membership and fresh fruit and vegetables, or even give priority
for other public services - such as jumping the queue for council
housing.

But heavy smokers, the obese and binge drinkers who
were a drain on the NHS could be denied some routine treatments such as
hip replacements until they cleaned up their act.

Those who
abused the system - by calling an ambulance when a trip to the GP would
be sufficient, or telephoning out of hours with needless queries -
could also be penalised.

The report calls for a greater
emphasis on the "citizen's responsibility" to be healthy and says no
one should expect taxpayers to fund their unhealthy lifestyles.

Here is the real problem:  This is absolutely logical.  There is nothing at all incorrect about the last statement for example.  This is not an abuse or an excess.  This is a completely predictable result of single-payer health care.  Any single-payer is going to have these incentives, but when the single-payer is the government, they not only have the incentives but the full coercive power to do something about it.  I am exhausted with the statist defense against such outcomes that "well, its just the particular individuals in charge -- if we could get the right guys in there, it would work great."  No.  The right guys are never in there, despite technocrats' big dreams, in part because the incentives in place turn even the right guys into the wrong guys. 

One of the reasons we spend so much on health care today is because most of us can do so without any personal financial cost.  Few of us (I am an exception, with a very high deductible policy) actually have to make cost-benefit trade offs in each of our health care purchases like we do in contrast for ... absolutely everything else we buy except health care.   The results are predictable.  We get pissed off when our insurance company denies coverage on some procedure or cost, we is part of the base-level of discontent that health care "reformers" draw on.  But it is stunning to me that people who have discontent with their current insurer feel like things will be better with the government!

Hey, this sounds like a women's issue!

What this article really shows is that by going with a single-payer government system, each of us would be ceding the decisions about our health care, our bodies, and even lifestyle to the government.  So surely women's groups, who were at the forefront of fighting against government intrusion into our decisions about our bodies, is out there leading the fight against government health care.  WRONG!  Their privacy arguments stand out today as sham libertarian arguments that applied only narrowly to abortion.  It's clear that as long as they can get full access to abortion, women's groups are A-OK with government intrusion into people's decisions about their bodies.

So please, dedicated feminists are urged to comment.  How do I relate this T-shirt from the NOW web store:

With this button from the NOW home page:

And a bit of text from their site:

People need and deserve universal, continuous,
and accessible health coverage that is provided by a single payer and
does not require full-time employment and a beneficent employer.
Learn more with our action toolkit....

With the recent release of Michael Moore's new movie, "SiCKO", and the
introduction in Congress of a bill to provide health insurance to all
U.S. residents, the movement for universal single-payer health
insurance is gaining momentum. This toolkit is provided to help you
take action on this important issue....

Health care is a right, not a privilege.

I wrote previously that I think Vista, in its current state, is inferior to Windows XP (particularly for businesses -- Directx 10 will make Vista a must for gamers).  For my desktop computers, I build them myself and can still get Windows XP OEM through NewEgg.  Unfortunately, for my kids new laptop, I had no choice but Vista.  I have not been very happy.  Here are my results so far.

1. It is way slower than XP, even on a fast dual-core Intel machine with a Nvidia 7900 graphics card.  You may have thought that the reboot and shut down process could not have gotten slower - WRONG!  Shutdown alone takes forever.
2. Many machines being sold today with Vista are not fast enough to really run it.  In particular, if your laptop is more than a year old or you paid less than $1700 or so for it, it is probably not going to do the job
3. Um, its pretty
4. Firefox will not run reliably.  It will install, and run once, and then it will give an error if you try to run it again.  It does not uninstall fully, and once (I tried to install and remove several times) it did not even show up in the uninstall menu
5. Unlike with XP, networking did not work right off the bat with Vista.  I had to do a lot of fiddling in menus that the average user wil never find or understand to get it running.
6. Of course, as is usual, Microsoft has felt the need to yet again totally reorganize control panel and the right-click-on-the-desktop menu.  I am sure some day the new organization will seem natural, but for now its just a gratuitous change with no apparent benefit

If at all possible, I advise you to wait for Service Pack 1, and for Moore's Law to let average computers catch up with Vista's requirements.  And don't even think about upgrading if you have old printers, scanners, and/or oddball devices you need to hook up -- there are very few Vista drivers out there for legacy equipmet