Coyote Blog

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.

The entire Pacific coast is vying to become the next rust belt.  Only the nice climate and beautiful scenery will keep anyone there.

The Labor Department reported yesterday that Oregon's unemployment rate soared to 12.4% in May, the nation's second highest after Michigan's 14.1%. What to do? If you're the geniuses in the state legislature in Salem, you naturally raise taxes.

Last week the legislature approved a $2 billion tax hike on personal income and small businesses that haven't already left the state. The highest tax rate on income above $500,000 would climb to 11% -- up from an already high 9%. Oregon will soon boast the second highest income tax rate in the nation, moving ahead of California (10.55%), and only slightly behind New York City (12.6%). Corporations will pay a 7.9% tax on gross receipts, up from 6.6%.

To be fair, Oregon does not really have a sales tax, so it is hard to compare apples and oranges on taxes.  But missing from the article is another factor in their unemployment, and the reason our company ultimately had to leave the state:  Oregon has the second highest minimum wage in the country (just behind Washington State and just ahead of California), and it is getting higher every year as it is automatically indexed to something or other that seems to be rising faster than inflation.

It is often said that one of the "problems" with American health care is that we spend far more on health care as a percent of GDP than other nations.  But why is this necessarily a problem?

The US is the wealthiest nation on Earth, top to bottom.  At every level of society, except perhaps for a few recent immigrants, people in this country are wealthier than their peers in a similar income quintile in another country, even Europe.  So it is not surprising that basic needs, like food and housing, might represent a smaller percentage of GDP here than in other nations.  Despite all the efforts of McDonalds and the Country Buffet to change things, there is only so much food we can consume, only so much living space we need, only so many cars we can drive at one time.

As these basics fall as a percentage of our income, something must gain.  It could be savings, but it could also be other spending where incremental outlays return percieved incremental benefits.  And so, why not health care?  What could possibly be more important than extension of our lives and/or the improvement of the quality of our living?  If we as a nation choose to spend our extra wealth on such things, is this really a bug, or a feature?

Update: Yes, I know, the problem is that we aren't really always able to make this decision as individuals optimizing our own tradeoffs.  We are too often forced to accept someone else's tradeoff.  Unfortunately, this problem is only going to get worse under any plan Congress is currently considering.  Someone else who is not you and doesn't even know you will decide how much a procedure is worth for you.

I am on the road today (off to London).  This is reprinted from Climate Skeptic:

From the CBO via the Washington Post:

Now comes the CBO with yet more news of the sort that neither Capitol Hill nor the White House is likely to welcome: its freshly released report on the federal government's long-term financial situation. To put it bluntly, the fiscal policy of the United States is unsustainable. Debt is growing faster than gross domestic product. Under the CBO's most realistic scenario, the publicly held debt of the U.S. government will reach 82 percent of GDP by 2019 -- roughly double what it was in 2008. By 2026, spiraling interest payments would push the debt above its all-time peak (set just after World War II) of 113 percent of GDP. It would reach 200 percent of GDP in 2038.

This huge mass of debt, which would stifle economic growth and reduce the American standard of living, can be avoided only through spending cuts, tax increases or some combination of the two. And the longer government waits to get its financial house in order, the more it will cost to do so, the CBO says.

Unfortunately, the answer to the question of when Obama will take ownership of the debt crisis he is causing is likely "never."  The most likely scenario is that Obama demands that we taxpayers, many of us who opposed his actions that led to this run-up of debt, take ownership for this debt via substantially higher taxes.

Funny quote from Radley Balko, discussing the lack of any real information at the new White House web site:

Good to know they're at least working hard to make flattering photographs of the president "more accessible" to the public. Who says Obama has dropped the ball on transparency?

The original was a sort of surprise -- one expected a movie based on a toy franchise to suck, but it was actually OK.  It had a bit of wit, probably Spielberg's influence.  The new movie is not nearly as good.  I give it about 2.5 stars, with that being an average of 1.5 stars when Megan Fox is off the screen and 5 stars when she is on the screen.   The director avoids doing anything to advance the plot when she is on the screen, which is good because it is hard to concentrate during those moments.

The one highlight for me was that most of the college scenes were filmed at my old alma mater Princeton.  With all due appologies to my friends, there is a certain amount of cognitive dissonance to seeing 40 or 50 consistently smoking hot college girls wandering around the Princeton campus.  We had a name for women like that when I was there -- we called them "visitors."

One bit of credit -- unlike a lot action movie sequels, the plot was mostly coherant.   The humor was strained, more sophomoric and less witty than the original.  Thedogs having sex in the beginning was gratuitous, for example.

Anyway, my kids enjoyed it, and it was a decent way to spend a summer afternoon when it was 107 outside.  Air conditioning always adds at least 1 star to every movie during a Phoenix summer.

I almost never publish links posts.  But I was really stuck when I read Radley Balko's Saturday Morning Links post because every one was awesome.  Balko is not only one of the best bloggers out there, but a great journalist as well in a field of us pundits who put on pretensions of being pajama-clad investigators.  So here are all of his morning links:

Why there are 60 minutes in an hour

Bloomberg takes the next step down the road toward anti-tobacco hysteria.

Zimbabwean newspaper prints billboards on paper made from the country's worthless currency.

Legless frogs epidemic probably not caused by pollution, but by dragonfly nymphs with a jones for frogs' legs.

Obama administration will support indefinite detention of terror suspects without a trial; drops the news late in the evening on a summer Friday.

TSA detains man for comic book script. Kicker: Scropt was about a guy who gets wrongfully harassed by the government for writing fiction about terror attacks that came true.

The whole Guantanamo issue has to be one of the great bait and switches of our time.  The fundamental human rights abuse was always the notion that civilians could be seized by the US Government and held, as they say in Britain, at the President's pleasure  (ie as long as the Administration wants, up to and including forever).

Somehow, this whole issue got perverted into a debate about Gitmo, rather than detentions per se.  I warned any number of times that if we kept focusing on merely the location of detention, rather than detention itself, it would give the government cover to close the facility and declare victory, while continuing the abusive practice of indefinite detention.

Unfortunately, I was right, both in this fear and my fear that Obama, once give presidential power, would be reluctant to eschew it.

Obama administration officials, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that an order, which would bypass Congress, could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

Unsurprisingly, after talking about various approaches for Congressional or Judicial oversight of Administration detention decisions, the Administration has apparently dropped plans for this.  Even the "security courts" of which I have always been suspicious (I always picture a jury full of TSA airport security screeners) have been ruled out by Obama.  We are back to the Bush doctrine of detention at the President's pleasure.

Banning welcome mats...

Families living in a flat block have been told to remove welcome mats from their porches because they are a health and safety risk.

They have also been told to remove pot plants because they create trip hazards and fire risks.

Residents at the block in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs. say the items have never caused problems.

...and implementing Castro-style block watches

In partnership with regional chapters of the charity group Crimestoppers U.K., multiple local police forces have launched a program called "Too Much Bling? Give Us a Ring." The object of the program is to encourage people who suspect that a neighbor or acquaintance is living off the proceeds of crime to anonymously provide information about that person to the police...

A key component of the "Too Much Bling?" program is its effort to tap into any resentment and anger members of the public may feel toward suspected criminals.

In a release issued by the Sussex Police Department, which used the program to help seize more than £1.5 million between April and December of last year, Detective Sergeant Mick Richards said, "Members of the public are sick and tired of seeing people with no legitimate income living a lavish lifestyle. We are working hard towards taking the cash out of crime making use of all the powers granted to us under the Proceeds of Crime Act and other legislation.

"I am very aware that in these difficult times how disheartening it is to see people 'flashing the cash' when you know that it has come from a life of crime and that they appear to be 'getting away with it,'" he said.

There actually was a US Route 666, in the four corners area.  It was renumbered under pressure from Christian groups, and for the pragmatic reason that people kept stealing the signs (I would love to have one).  Apparently there was a horror film by that name, but it couldn't be as good as the classic Interstate-60, an exploration of freedom and slavery that is one of my favorites and should be on the must-see list of every libertarian.

Update: From my son, Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia

This is pretty incredible, even by the general standard for Illinois scandals:

In one e-mail exchange, University of Illinois Chancellor Richard Herman forced the law school to admit an unqualified applicant backed by then- Gov. Rod Blagojevich while seeking a promise from the governor's go-between that five law school graduates would get jobs. The applicant, a relative of deep-pocketed Blagojevich campaign donor Kerry Peck, appears to have been pushed by Trustee Lawrence Eppley, who often carried the governor's admissions requests.

When Law School Dean Heidi Hurd balked on accepting the applicant in April 2006, Herman replied that the request came "Straight from the G. My apologies. Larry has promised to work on jobs (5). What counts?"

Hurd replied: "Only very high-paying jobs in law firms that are absolutely indifferent to whether the five have passed their law school classes or the Bar."

Props to Heidi Hurd for such a sharp response.  The scale is pretty staggering:

Gov. Pat Quinn convened a state commission to investigate the U. of I. admissions process after the Tribune revealed that more than 800 undergraduate applicants in the last five years received special consideration because they were backed by U. of I. trustees, legislators and others in powerful posts.

That's 160 a year!  I don't know how large the law school is, but that must be a respectable portion of the class.  via Glenn Reynolds

Postscript: Remember what I said on January 20th:

There is some sort of weird mass self-hypnosis going on, made even odder by the fact that a lot of people seem to know they are hypnotized, at least at some level.  I keep getting shushed as I make fun of friends' cult behavior watching the proceedings today, as if by jiggling someone's elbow too hard I might break the spell.  Never have I seen, in my lifetime, so much emotion invested in a politician we know nothing about.   I guess I am just missing some gene that makes the rest of humanity receptive to this kind of stuff, but just for a minute snap your fingers in front of your face and say "do I really expect a fundamentally different approach from a politician who won his spurs in "¦. Chicago?  Do I really think the ultimate political outsider is going to be the guy who bested everyone at their own game in the Chicago political machine?"

Lots of eulogizing going on.  This one on Ayn Rand and Fawcett is certainly unique, though.  Don't think that will make 20/20 tonight.

Postscript: Yes, I am of that age that I had her famous poster on my wall (Fawcett, not Rand).  Ms. Fawcett was a member of my personal klutz-to-the-stars club.  I once got an ink spot on her white blouse awkwardly trying to get an autograph (back when I used to value such things).  I have also stepped on Raul Julia's foot at the academy awards, slammed a door open into Martina Navratalova's face at a hotel in Houston, thrown up in Neal Armstrong's bed at a ranch in Wyoming, and spilled a large fountain drink on Brooke Shields at Princeton.

As I wrote before, Waxman-Markey puts most of the onus for CO2 reduction on refiners and transportation fuels, so that is the area we will see the most price increase if the bill passes.

So I ask you, after putting this huge effective tax on refiners, which will also in some cases force refiners to shut down capacity and produce less fuel, how long will it be before a politician starts to demagogue oil companies for rising gasoline prices and/or fuel shortages?

This is at the end of the day why Congress wanted cap-and-trade rather than a carbon tax.  By putting the tax on unsympathetic targets like oil companies, Congress and Obama can pretend that inevitable consumer price increases are the oil companies greedy fault, and not related to the actions in Washington.

The whole point of cap-and-trade (or a carbon tax) is to set broad costs of emissions or broad tradeable limits, and then let millions of individual consumers and industries figure out the most effective way for each of them to meet these costs or limits.  For example, if I were to have a personal cap, changes in my car's MPG would be meaningless, because my work is 1.9 miles from my house.  I would probably start with putting the film coating on my windows of my house I have been considering.  They guy in New Jersey who drives 45 miles to work and has a small house might have a different solution.

But this whole philosophy of letting individuals drive the bus flies in the face of everything Congress believes in.  They believe they are smarter than you or I, and thus they should pick the solutions, not us.  And allowing for individual action doesn't generate campaign contributions like picking winners does.

So despite being a cap-and-trade bill, Waxman-Markey essentially picks winners.  One way is through targeted investments of taxpayer money in technologies whose owners have lobbied hard before Congress.  Another is this:

The legislation will drive up individual and commercial consumer's fuel prices because it inequitably distributes free emissions "allowances" to various sectors.  Electricity suppliers are responsible for about 40% of the emissions covered by the bill and receive approximately 44% of the allowances "“ specifically to protect power consumers from price increases.  However the bill holds refiners responsible for their own emissions plus the emissions from the use of petroleum products.  In total refiners are responsible for 44% of all covered emissions, yet the legislation grants them only 2% of the free allowances.

This means that Congress has decided to extract all of the CO2 reduction from transportation and other refined fuel users, rather than from electrical power generation.  Is this because they have some study in hand that shows the best bang for the buck in reducing CO2 comes from transportation?  Of course not, and even if they did, it would be hard to believe given the number of large coal plants in this country that generate far more CO2 than even a fleet of Escalades.

No, the reason for this is purely political -- every representative has an electric utility in their district lobbying and paying campaign contributions, but few have organized lobbies of automobile drivers.   And so, rather than pushing for fuel shifts from coal to gas or nuclear in power generation, this bill will primarily achieve its meager results from making it more expensive for people to drive.