Coyote Blog

The ultimate argument I get to my climate talk, when all other opposition fails, is that the precautionary principle should rule for CO2.  By their interpretation, this means that we should do everything possible to abate CO2 even if the risk of catastrophe is minor since the magnitude of the potential catastrophe is so great.

The problem is that this presupposes there are no harms, or opportunity costs, on the other end of the scale.  In fact, while CO2 may have only a small chance of catastrophe, Bill McKibben's desire to reduce fossil fuel use by 95% has a near certain probability of gutting the world economy and locking billions into poverty.  Here is one illustration I just crafted for my new presentation.  As usual, click to enlarge:

A large number of people seem to assume that our use of fossil fuels is an arbitrary choice among essentially comparable options (or worse, a sinister choice forced on us by the evil oil cabal).  In fact, fossil fuels have a number of traits that make them uniquely irreplaceable, at least with current technologies.  For example, gasoline has an absolutely enormous energy content per pound of fuel.  Most vehicles - space shuttles, and more recently electric cars - must dedicate an enormous percentage of their power production just to moving the weight of their fuel.  Not so in gasoline engine cars, something those who are working with electric cars must face every day.

By the way, if you want to see the kick-off of version 3.0 of my climate presentation, it will be at my son's school, Amherst College, this Thursday at 7PM.  More here.

Update: By the way,  I was careful in the chart to say the two " are correlated".  I actually do not think one causes the other.  In this case, I think there are a third, and fourth, and fifth (etc.)  factors that cause both.  For example, economic development leads to (and depends on) increased fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions, and it leads to longer lives.

Had an interesting discussion with my favorite New England liberal this weekend about the Time Magazine article on Hospital pricing and charges.  We both found the articles to be excellent.  But drew completely different conclusions.  She saw this all as a failure of capitalism, a sign of the inherent corruption that occurs that demands more goverment intervention.  I saw it as a totally screwed up market, from the dominance of third party payers to government-enforced monopolies (e.g. certificates of need), that killed any incentive of consumers to shop. The entire pricing mechanism is broken, and simply replacing it with a set of fiat prices from the government is not going to make things better.

Megan McArdle has a good interview with Bart Wilson on this very topic.  Here is a small excerpt:

Megan: Okay, so let me ask the obvious question: if a whole lot of health care wonks think that government-rate setting would fix health care costs, why should I be skeptical?

Wilson: Who knows the conditions of who values what and the opportunity costs of supplying health care? What set of minds in the government has the knowledge needed to make tradeoffs, to know who is best to supply this service or that one?

The values and costs of healthcare have to be discovered.

Megan: The wonks who favor rate-setting argue that health care simply isn't like any other market. For one thing, there's an information problem: how do I know if I want a heart bypass or not?

Why not let an expert who has read all the studies on heart bypasses make that decision?

Wilson: Right now, the doctor recommends to the patient what the insurance company will pay for. What incentive does the patient have to find alternatives? (None.)

There is the assumption that an expert knows all the alternatives. Doctors are not interchangeable. They know different things.

The function of a market is let us learn who will serve us sufficiently well.

Megan: So let's step back even farther, to 30,000 feet or so, for a second. What does the price do in a market? Why should I want to put a price on my lung transplant?

Wilson: A price is like a symbol at any moment of what millions of people are willing and able to do. All of the technology and services of the doctors have to be weighed against whatever else they could be applied to.

The prices of alternatives to lung transplants are doing the same thing. The difficulty is assuming that a lung transplant is "inelastic". What a price system does is find what part of say, healthcare, is on the margin.

“Inelastic” means that I’m relatively indifferent to the price. The last glass of water in a desert is the quintessential inelastic good; people will pay all they have to get it. Things can be more or less inelastic, which is to say, that demand can be more or less responsive to changes in price. Health care is often thought to be very inelastic.

Megan: But this is precisely the argument that health care wonks make: when I need a lung transplant, I don't have the time, or the emotional ability, to comparison shop. So there's no price discovery mechanism.

Wilson: Does the government know or have the ability to comparison shop for me? Do they know my circumstances?

Also, for some healthcare services, you do have the ability to comparison shop. Those services will then discipline the healthcare market in general.

source

Kevin Drum quoted this from James Fallows in a post labelled "threat inflation"

As I think about it this war and others the U.S. has contemplated or entered during my conscious life, I realize how strong is the recurrent pattern of threat inflation. Exactly once in the post-WW II era has the real threat been more ominous than officially portrayed

I thought, "wow, someone from the Coke or the Pepsi party is finally going to call BS on all the apocalyptic forecasts from both parties over the sequester."  But alas, he was just discussing foreign policy.  That is not to say I don't agree with the basic point, that foreign policy prescriptions are often accompanied by exaggerated horror stories of imminent threats -- I just wish they would recognize the same dynamic on the domestic front, whenever the smallest cut in government spending growth rates suddenly mean we are are going to put grandma out on an ice flow to freeze.

Via Mark Perry

I reached drinking age (mercifully 18 in those days) in 1980 and I can tell you from experience that the early 80's were a beer wasteland.  Spent a lot of time learning foreign beers at a great little pub I discovered entirely by accident called the Gingerman in Houston (near Rice University).  The beer landscape in the US today is awesome by comparison.

source (and don't miss the Maxine Waters classic about 150 million jobs at stake, at the link).

Via Maggies Farm

My son ordered a book from my Amazon account (the Way of Baseball by Shawn Green) and accidentally had it sent to my house rather than to his dorm.  Looking at my shipping costs on UPS to get it up to him, it was cheaper to buy a new copy for him and have Amazon ship it for free with my Prime membership than it was for me to ship the other copy to him.  I would love to see what Amazon pays UPS.  This is a $24 list price hardback book that Amazon sells for $9.60 and then packages and ships for free.

Why is the media always so deferential to the state?  The reasons may be in part ideological, but there is a public choice explanation as well -- the state (particularly local police and crime stories) generate most of its headlines, and so they have a financial incentive to retain access to the source of so much of their content.

Perhaps even more revealing, though, was this:

To start, [San Diego County Sheriff's Office] spokeswoman Jan Caldwell explained to the room full of journalists why it is so important to be nice to her: "If you are rude, if you are obnoxious, if you are demanding, if you call me a liar, I will probably not talk to you anymore. And there's only one sheriff's department in town, and you can go talk to the deputies all you want but there's one PIO."

Here we have the heart of the matter. "Professional" journalists may, indeed, be brilliant, talented, well-trained, professional, with an abiding appetite for hard-hitting but neutral reporting. Yet professional journalists also depend on relationships. Ms. Caldwell calls that fact out, sending law enforcement's core message to the press: if you want access, play the game.

The game colors mainstream media coverage of criminal justice. Here's my overt bias: I'm a criminal defense attorney, a former prosecutor, and a critic of the criminal justice system. In my view, the press is too often deferential to police and prosecutors. They report the state's claims as fact and the defense's as nitpicking or flimflam. They accept the state's spin on police conduct uncritically. They present criminal justice issues from their favored "if it bleeds it leads" perspective rather than from a critical and questioning perspective, happily covering deliberate spectacle rather than calling it out as spectacle. They accept leaks and tips and favors from law enforcement, even when those tips and leaks and favors violate defendants' rights, and even when the act of giving the tip or leak or favor is itself a story that somebody ought to be investigating. In fact, they cheerfully facilitate obstruction of justice through leaks. They dumb down criminal justice issues to serve their narrative, or because they don't understand them.

This "professional" press approach to the criminal justice system serves police and prosecutors very well. They favor reporters who hew to it. Of course they don't want to answer questions from the 800-pound bedridden guy in fuzzy slippers in his mother's basement. But it's not because an 800-pound bedridden guy can't ask pertinent questions. It's because he's frankly more likely to ask tough questions, more likely to depart from the mutually accepted narrative about the system, less likely to be "respectful" in order to protect his access. (Of course, he might also be completely nuts, in a way that "mainstream" journalism screens out to some extent.)

Which is why, despite Joe Arpaio's frequent antics that make national news, it falls to our local alt-weekly here in Phoenix rather than our monopoly daily paper to do actual investigative reporting on the Sheriff's office.

It is simply appalling that the officer in this video was acquitted by a judge of assault.  It is clear from the video that he punched a woman who did absolutely nothing wrong (he thought she was the one who had thrown the liquid at him in the early frames).  But even if she had been absolutely guilty of splashing him with a few drops of beer, his reaction is STILL assault.

This quote is particularly amazing:

Josey testified that the woman refused to drop a bottle of beer she had been holding. He said that he went to knock the bottle from her hand and was “shocked” to see her go down when his hand hit her face. She was originally charged with disorderly conduct but the charges were later dropped.

This is an outright lie.  Watch the video.  There is absolutely no time for the officer to have ordered the woman to have dropped the beer.  Nor would that have been a legal order.  Nor is there any evidence of him waiting for her response.  He was pissed off that someone "dissed" him and he lashed out like a violent jerk in a biker bar.

I shudder to think how many people in the past were prosecuted and went to jail on the BS word of police officers.  Without video, this woman probably would have been successfully prosecuted and convicted.  Even with video, the police officer can't be successfully prosecuted.  Though I must give Philly a few point here -- a lot of jurisdictions would not have even prosecuted or fired him.

Kevin Drum thinks he has found the smoking health care gun - US doctors are paid more than everyone else.  That is why we have too-expensive medical care!  A few quick thoughts

• I am the last one to argue that doctors salaries are set anywhere like at a market clearing price.  Our certification system, crazy third-party payer systems, lack of price transparency, and absurd arguments over the "doc fix" and Medicare reimbursement rates all convince me that doctor salaries must be "wrong"
• The charts he shows have absolutely no correction for productivity, at least as I read the methodology.  Per the text, they don't even have correction for hours worked.  A McKinsey report several years ago found that US doctors made more, but also saw a lot more patients in a day.  GP care cost more than expected vs. other country's experience, but is due mostly to number of visits, not cost per visit.
• There is no correction for doctor expenses.  Malpractice insurance, anyone?  We have the most costly malpractice insurance in the world because we have the most broken system.  Doctors pay that out of their salary
• US GP salaries in Drum's linked report are actually falling, unlike all the other countries studied.  Seem to have fallen 6% in 10 years (page 18), whereas France, for example, has increased more than 10%.

To the last point, I have a hypothesis.  When you first overlay a government health care / price control regime, you get an initial savings.  Doctors are forced to work for less and they still, out of habit and momentum, abide by past productivity standards.  But over time, productivity, like any government-captured function falls.  And over time, doctors, like other civil service groups, become better at organizing and lobbying and begin to get increasing pay packages.  After all, if teachers and fire-fighters can scare Californians into absurd pay and benefit packages, what do you think doctors will be able to do once they learn the game?

I have written before that trade policy is generally ALL corporate cronyism -- tariffs or restrictions that benefit a narrow set of producers at the expense of 300 million US consumers.

Mark Perry has yet another example, though with a small twist.  Most corporations are looking for limits on imports of competing products and/or subsidies for their own products exports.  In the case of Dow Chemical, they are looking for limits on exports of key inputs to their plants, specifically oil and natural gas.  CEO Andrew Liveris wants to force an artificial supply glut to drive down his input prices by banning the export (or continuing to ban the export) of natural gas.  If gas producers can't sell their product?  Tough -- let them try to out-crony a massive company like Dow in Washington.

But here is the irony -- there is absolutely nothing in his logic for banning natural gas exports that would not apply equally well to banning the export of his own products.   Like natural gas, his products are all inputs into many other products and manufacturing processes that would all likely benefit from lower prices of Dow's products as Dow would benefit from lower natural gas prices.

So here is my proposal -- any company that publicly advocates for banning exports for its purchases must first have exports of its own products banned.

The extent to which the media is aiding and abetting, with absolutely no skepticism, the sky-is-falling sequester reaction of pro-big-government forces is just sickening.  I have never seen so many absurd numbers published so credulously by so much of the media.  Reporters who are often completely unwilling to accept any complaints from corporations as valid when it comes to over-taxation or over-regulation are willing to print their sequester complaints without a whiff of challenge.  Case in point, from here in AZ.  This is a "news" article in our main Phoenix paper:

Arizona stands to lose nearly 49,200 jobs and as much as $4.9 billion in gross state product this year if deep automatic spending cuts go into effect Friday, and the bulk of the jobs and lost production would be carved from the defense industry.

Virtually all programs, training and building projects at the state’s military bases would be downgraded, weakening the armed forces’ defense capabilities, according to military spokesmen.

“It’s devastating and it’s outrageous and it’s shameful,” U.S. Sen. John McCain told about 200 people during a recent town-hall meeting in Phoenix.

“It’s disgraceful, and it’s going to happen. And it’s going to harm Arizona’s economy dramatically,” McCain said.

Estimates vary on the precise number of jobs at stake in Arizona, but there’s wide agreement that more than a year of political posturing on sequestration in Washington will leave deep economic ruts in Arizona.

Not a single person who is skeptical of these estimates is quoted in the entirety of the article.  The entire incremental cut of the sequester in discretionary spending this year is, from page 11 of the most recent CBO report, about $35 billion (larger numbers you may have seen around 70-80 billion include dollars that were going away anyway, sequester or not, which just shows the corruption of this process and the reporting on it.)

Dividing this up based on GDP, about 1/18th of this cut would apply to Arizona, giving AZ a cut in Federal spending of around $2 billion.  It takes a heroic multiplier to get from that to  $4.9 billion in GDP loss.  Its amazing to me that Republicans assume multipliers less than 1 for all government spending, except for defense (and sports stadiums) which magically take on multipliers of 2+.

Update:  I wrote the following letter to the Editor today:

I was amazed that in Paul Giblin’s February 26 article on looming sequester cuts [“Arizona Defense Industry, Bases Would Bear Brunt Of Spending Cuts”], he was able to write 38 paragraphs and yet could not find space to hear from a single person exercising even a shred of skepticism about these doom and gloom forecasts.

The sequester rhetoric that Giblin credulously parrots is part of a game that has been played for decades, with government agencies and large corporations that supply them swearing that even trivial cuts will devastate the economy.  They reinforce this sky-is-falling message by threatening to cut all the most, rather than least, visible and important tasks and programs in order to scare the public into reversing the cuts.  The ugliness of this process is made worse by the hypocrisy of Republicans, who suddenly become hard core Keynesians when it comes to spending on military.

It is a corrupt, yet predictable, game, and it is disappointing to see the ArizonaRepublic playing along so eagerly.

We have heard about the difficulty folks who are retired are having with low interest rates.  But low interest rates are having a huge impact on corporations that still have defined-benefit pensions.

Across America's business landscape, the gap between the amount that companies expect to owe retirees and what they have on hand to pay them was an estimated $347 billion at the end of 2012. That is better than the $386 billion gap recorded at the end of 2011, but the two years represent the worst deficits ever, according to J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

The firm estimates that companies now hold only $81 of every $100 promised to pensioners.

In general, everything happening on the liability side of the pension equation is working against companies. A big source of the problem: persistently low interest rates, set largely by the Federal Reserve....

Pension liabilities change over time as employees enter and leave a pension plan. For financial-reporting purposes, companies use a so-called discount rate to calculate the present value of payments they expect to make over the life of their plan.

The discount rate serves as a proxy for the hypothetical interest rate that an insurance company would expect on a bond today to fund a company's future pension payments. The lower the discount rate, the greater the company's pension liabilities.

Boeing's discount rate, for example, fell to 3.8% last year from 6.2% in 2007. The aircraft manufacturer said in a securities filing that a 0.25-percentage-point decrease in its discount rate would add $3.1 billion to its projected pension obligations.

Boeing reported a net pension deficit of $19.7 billion at the end of 2012.

The discount rate is based on the yields of highly rated corporate bonds—double-A or higher—with maturities equal to the expected schedule of pension-benefit payouts.

Moody's decision last summer to lower the credit rating of big banks hurt UPS and other companies by booting those banks out of the calculation. And because bonds issued by some of those banks carried higher yields than other bonds used in the calculation, UPS's discount rate fell 1.20 percentage points.

This is obviously not a wildly productive use of corporate funds, to divert ever-increasing amounts of money to pay people who are no longer producing.  But at least corporations are acknowledged the problem (I will give credit where it is due -- thanks to accounting rules and government regulations that force a fair amount of transparency here).

It is interesting to note the Boeing example, where their expected rate of return on pension funds fell from 6.2% to 3.8%.  Compare that to corrupt government entities like Calpers, which bravely faced this new reality by cutting its discount rate from an absurd 7.75% to a still absurd 7.5%.  This despite returns last year around 1%.  By keeping the number artificially high, Calpers is hiding its underfunding problem.  An interesting reform would be to force Calpers to use a discount rate equal to the average of that used by the 10 largest private pension funds.

Most of the Left wants to measure access to health care by the percentage of people who have health insurance, implying that those without insurance have no access to care.  But in fact the uninsured in the US have access to better health care than most other people in the world.

And it will soon become apparent that the converse is not true either - even with insurance, in a top-down rules-driven government-controlled health care system, one may not have access to health care.    For example, one of my employees was complaining that she was having trouble with workers comp getting care for her injury.  This is a follow-up email I received today from my insurance agent (redacted only for privacy issues):

I talked to [valued employee of my company, call her Jane] this morning regarding her lack of attention from [our workers comp insurer].

I then followed up immediately with [representative of workers comp insurer] working on her account, in Sacramento, CA.

It seems the problem is her injury occurred in CA and she's now in MO.  The doctors in MO don't want to see her due to the paperwork and issues required under the CA laws. 

Jane advises she gets relief from going to a chiropractor.  I told her to keep going and I would get [insurance company] to approve those visits, which [workers comp insurer rep] said she would.

So, it comes down to [our insurance company] trying to find an Orthopedic Doctor who will take her and comply with the CA requirements, which the Drs. don't like.

There is no issues on coverage, it's a political issue.

Already, Medicare and Medicaid patients have trouble finding doctors to treat them.  Enjoy the cozy feeling of being "insured" via Obamacare.  Let's hope that when you are sick, there is a doctor who will see you.

Well, as promised, I wanted to post our race day picture from the half marathon.  This was done for my daughter's benefit, who set the goal to run a half marathon about 6 months ago and figured the promise of a Disney trip would be incentive to stay on top of her training.

She schlepped that tutu and that tiara for the whole 13.1, walking only at a couple of the last water stops.  This event was 95% women, and attracts a LOT of folks who really don't run the whole thing, so it was a great place for her to begin.  It's also pretty laid back, as there are actually character photo ops every mile, though we skipped those.  I have not seen our time, but we probably did about 2:45.  That's 20 minutes worse than my time five years ago -- it would be nice to say I was holding back to stay with my daughter but in fact she pulled me through the last mile.  Muscles and cardio were fine but the knees and ankles really can't take it any more.  But I proudly wore this bad boy all day.

If you are interested in this sort of thing, it was a great event, going through two of their parks.  The only problem is that it has to take place before the parks are open, so we had to set the wake-up call for 3:15 AM.  Uggh.  The butt-crack of dawn, as my sister calls it.

And yes, I did help make the tutu, with the aid of this video.  It is videos like that that remind me there are whole worlds of which I am virtually unaware.   Note the number of views - 1.4 million, on making a tutu.

This is really well done

Pretty entertaining video from down under. Sent by a reader:

I often tell folks that while the taxes in California are irritating, what has really killed my interest in expanding in California is the regulatory burden.  It took 3 years to get through Ventura County planning department to get permission to put a modular ticket booth in a corner of an existing parking lot -- only to be denied.  I have faced potential prosecution because we demolished an unsafe deck without state permission.  I now have to fire people who try to work through lunch or else face employees suing  me (successfully!) later for their voluntarily working through lunch.

I think that is why I enjoyed this blog, SLO Leaks, so much.  It is a 3-1/2 year story of an obviously wealthy gentleman trying to get the local planning board and later the California Coastal Commission to allow him to build a house on his residential-zoned land.  I sat up for hours last night reading through it.  42 months and $3 million later, he still is not even close to having his approvals.  It is interesting to see his respectful-of-authority tone shifting over time, until at the end he is writing about how he has shifted his company's new office and expansion from California to Texas.

Here are a few nuggets.   Here is what he is up against:

Once a year the Public Works Dept gives a report on what has happened in the previous year in the Avila Beach area. One part of their report is on how many building permits were issued. In order to get a building permit you first have to get a minor use permit through the Planning Dept, so this is a good gauge of how much work the Planning Dept does. So for the period from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011, in the Avila area, which has Ryan Hostetter as a full time planner, the entire list of building permit issued is here:

One single family residential permit was issued during the entire year.

That’s it. No commercial buildings, no office building, no barns, just one single family house permit. And it wasn’t my permit, that’s for sure – because I am now going through the potentially years long Coastal Commission permit appeal process before I can even apply for a building permit.

And this:

So after waiting nearly a year, Daniel Robinson, who is a low level bureaucrat with the California Coastal Commission, and who had never even been to the house site, and who had never even met me or my wife, has told me that he doesn’t like my front yard, he thinks the retaining walls are too big, he thinks my house is too big, and that he doesn’t like the overall design of my house. Daniel thinks that my house should look more like a farm house, and also that people walking around in the city of Pismo Beach will be offended by the mere sight of my house (so called “visual impact”). And if my house design doesn’t please him then he will recommend to the full Coastal Commission that they deny my permits. Since I will only get 3 minutes to defend my house in front of the Coastal Commission I would then probably lose that permit appeal vote and I will be unable to build my house at all, and I will lose about $3 million, and will have wasted years of my life.

The California Coastal Commission is perhaps the most capricious and authoritarian government entity in the country, for example:

But then there was the minor issue of a permit for Daly City, a suburb of San Francisco, to rebuild a rock retaining wall that had been damaged during the last winter storms. It was such a minor issue that Daley City didn’t even send a representative to the CCC meeting. What could possibly go wrong?

The rock retaining wall was to protect a dirt and gravel road that follows along the coastline. On the other side of the dirt road is an abandoned landfill that Daley City capped over in the 1970′s. And I watched the Coastal Commission, apparently on a whim, decide to overrule their staff and instead of issuing a permit they decided to require Daily City to dig up the entire landfill and relocate it inland somewhere. Where it got relocated to the Coastal Commission didn’t care – since that isn’t their problem. And the estimate to do this landfill relocation is $125,000,000.00!

$125,000,000.00 works out to $1250.00 for every man, woman, and child in Daly City. And the Coastal Commission decided that this must happen with about 10 minutes of discussion amongst themselves and without a single fact to cloud their minds! It was both unbelievable and terrifying.

From all the facts, it looks to me like he is never going to get approved.  But you can get quick approval from the  CCC -- if you are rich and have political juice

Like me, [Steve Blank] is in the high tech industry. Like me, he has started several high tech companies....

After Steve sold his last startup company he applied for a permit to build a house in the California Coastal Zone in 2000. And, just like me, Steve’s land use permit was appealed to the California Coastal Commission. The reason for the appeal was “sensitive habitat” issues. (I don’t have any sensitive habitat issues because my proposed house is in the middle of a field of non-native weeds.)

Unlike me, Steve’s appeal to the Coastal Commission went pretty smoothly. He had his hearing in only 8 months – start to finish. It has taken me a year and a half, after waiting a year and a half for SLO County to issue the permit in the first place. And there were no onerous “Special Conditions” imposed on Steve by either San Mateo County or the Coastal Commission.

Here is the list of “Special Conditions” that the Coastal staff wants to impose on me.

Superficially Steve’s house and my house are similar. I have a main house and a barn on 37 acres, Steve has a main house, two barns, and a farm labor house. But Steve’s house is 15,780 sq. ft., with a swimming pool, and a 2,500 sq. ft. barn, and another 3,040 sq. ft. barn 31 ft. high, and a 1240 sq. ft. farm labor house all on 261 acres. So Steve’s house is around 3 times larger than my proposed house (and much taller). Steve also got to have a fence and there was no requirement for public access. And Steve was able to build his house to look anyway he wanted. No “rural agricultural theme” architecture for Steve, that’s for sure. Steve can also plant in his yard pretty much any damn thing he wants.

Steve is pretty proud of his house. A picture of his house is the banner to his web page, which ishere. You can see the front gate of his house here. And this is an overhead view.

Steve Blank is one of the current California Coastal Commissioners.

Is Al Gore in town?

Gotta love the government.  Buy high, sell low.  Source

This just came in over the transom via email.

WASHINGTON, D.C.///February 20, 2013///Sequestration will cut visitor access to the rim of the Grand Canyon, significantly delay the spring opening of key portions of Yellowstone and Yosemite, reduce emergency response help for drivers in the Great Smoky Mountains, limit access to the beach at the Cape Cod National Seashore, and impair the experiences in many other ways for millions of visitors at America’s national parks.   In addition, local, regional and state economies that depend on national parks will take huge hits as visitors are either turned away or skip visits due to the impact of the mindless sequestration budget cuts.....

CNPSR Spokesperson, Joan Anzelmo, former Superintendent of Colorado National Monument said:  “Congress might just as well put a big “Keep Out !” sign at the entrance to Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Yosemite, the Cape Cod Seashore, and every other iconic national park in the U.S.   This foolhardy path tarnishes America’s ‘crown jewels’ and is a repudiation of the nation’s national parks often touted as ‘America’s best idea’.  Millions of Americans depend on national parks for their vacations and livelihood.  Those Americans are being told that national parks don’t count … that people who use national parks don’t count … and that people who live and work near national parks don’t count.”

A few observations:

• It's a 5% freaking cut.  I bet Wal-Mart is a more tightly-run organization than the NPS, and I further bet if I forced an immediate 5% cut at Wal-Mart they would do it without cutting store hours or service to customers.
• Again, we see government officials cutting the most cherished, visible services, rather than the chaff, in order to maximize citizen outrage rather than do their freaking job and set priorities
• It's a freaking 5% cut.  Did I say that already?
• I could cut huge chunks from the NPS budget while improving service by having private companies perform many operating functions.  Our company runs nearly 175 parks and in every one we have seen something like a 50% reduction in cost over government operation while simultaneously increasing staffing in the parks.
• This is absolutely boilerplate from every single agency and constituency that gets threatened with even the tiniest budget cut -- "you are telling XXX group they don't count."  Barf.
• I was going to make some observations about their budget over the last few years, but all their budget detail pages online seem to be down

I am currently as depressed and cynical as I have ever been today due to this absurd reaction to a trivial spending cut.  I have about zero hope that Federal spending will ever be reigned in.  Politicians of both parties and the special interests that support them will spend and spend until we find ourselves calling Greece asking for a bailout.

If the Republicans are supposed to be the voice of fiscal responsibility in Washington, then we are doomed.  They are absolutely as bad as Obama, running around in panic that the trivial cuts required by the sequester (not 8% this year or 5% or even 2% but 1% of Federal spending).  I have never seen a private organization with a large administrative staff that could not take a 5% reduction and generally be better off for it.   I absolutely guarantee that I could take 5% or more off the top of every agency's budget and you would never notice it.

This includes the military.  In fact, this includes the military in particular.  The military is never asked to prioritize.   We still have armored divisions in Germany.  It is always incredible to me that Republicans, who doubt that the government can ever manage or spend wisely, suddenly cast aside all these doubts when it comes to the military.   I understand the honor that folks accord to front-line soldiers vs., say, DMV workers.  But they are not the ones spending the money.  I am tired of such honor for the troops being used to bait and switch me from a very reasonable focus on DOD spending and waste.

When it comes to the military, Republicans use the same "closing the Washington Monument" tactics that Democrats use for social programs, essentially claiming that a 5% (or 1%) spending cut will result in the cessation of whatever activity taxpayers most want to see continue.  This process of offering up the most, rather than the least, important uses of money when spending cuts are proposed as a tactic to avoid spending cuts is one of the most corrupt practices imaginable.  No corporate CEO would tolerate it of his managers for a micro-second.

About two years ago at Forbes I imagined a hypothetical budget discussion at a corporation that followed Congressional budgeting practices.

This weekend I will be running (with my daughter) in the Disney Princess Half Marathon in Orlando.

Last weekend she and I went to the fabric store, bought a bunch of tulle (new word for me) and made her a tutu to run in.  Tested it out running 6 miles.  I think she found it liberating to run all around town in a tutu and a tiara.  Got lots of honks from cars that passed.

I will post a picture when I have one.  I will run in costume too, but don't expect too much.  I am a person who cuts off the end of my shoelaces when running distances to reduce weight, so my costume is not elaborate.

Update: Got my hair cut today. Another ounce shaved off

... but these are worse.  But for someone who runs a small business, not wildly surprising.  Employers who believe that abject carelessness and rule-breaking on the employee's part should result in no claim do not have sufficient experience with the system.  At this point, whatever its origins, workers comp is effectively no-fault bad outcomes insurance.  If a bad thing happens to the worker on the job, then it generally pays no matter what the fault or facts of the case.

Our problem tends to be that we get a whole heck of a lot of "injuries" in the 3-4 hours between when we fire someone and when they leave the property.

Via Overlawyered.