Coyote Blog

We are considering switching our Blue Cross / Blue Shield individual health coverage to a higher deductible policy from Assurant.  Anyone have any experience with these guys, positive or negative?

I am always floored by the number of progressives who embrace all kinds of wacky non-scientific health theories.  These are the same folks who criticize creationists as being anti-scientific.  I am not a creationist, but I might be able to embrace it faster than I could, say, the insanity that is homeopathic medicine**. 

Unfortunately, these are the same folks who will likely make up the backbone of the socialized medicine bureaucracy when and if the US finally decides to hand health care over to a consortium of the Post Office and Walther Reed.  So here is a preview of what we will get:

Tom and Donna (not their real names) are professional
shamen. They teach classes in shamanism at a "foundation", where you
can learn "soul retrieval healing", help the dead "continue their
journey into the Hereafter", and investigate "the Fairy Kingdom". These
soul retrievers and Fairy Kingdom investigators also work for the NHS "”
where, according to Tom's foundation profile, they "use complementary
therapies to help those with mental health difficulties". Shaman
therapies are not the only unorthodox treatments for which the NHS will
gladly pay.

Taxpayers are also subsidising Emotional
Freedom Technique (EFT) "therapy", in which, according to one NHS
trust, "subtle energies" are reordered via "tapping with the fingertips
to stimulate certain meridian energy points while the client is "˜tuned
in' to the problem". "¦If EFT doesn't do the job, an NHS foot massage
might help. Reflexologists believe that each part of the foot maps to a
different organ, and that massaging a particular point can treat that
organ. Medical doctors think it's absurd. "¦Most depressing of all for
the rational taxpayer is the NHS Directory for Alternative and
Complementary Medicine, which aims to promote "dowsers", "flower
therapists" and "crystal healers". We've just learnt that some
hospitals are removing every third light bulb to save money, and that
nurses are being paid half the minimum wage "” or being asked to work
for nothing "” at others. That's how bad the financial crisis has
become. Meanwhile, the National Health Service is employing shaman
fairy enthusiasts as psychological counsellors, enthusiastically
providing treatments invented by "an ordained minister and a personal
performance coach" who thinks tapping your body can cure diabetes,
promoting dowsers and crystal healers and spending vast amounts on
therapies that can't be scientifically supported.

Just as with the Walther Reed mess, the left wants to write off this stuff as just bad management, as an exception.  But unfortunately, this is the rule for government management.  It always goes bad.  Mismatched incentives + lack of individual choice + strong unionized bureaucracy most concerned with its own job security + impossibly complex information flows = mess.  Always.  I get very tired of the excuse, as I wrote here, that "if only we were in charge, everything would work great." 

Throughout these years, libertarians like myself argued that there
were at least three problems with all of this technocratic statism:

• You don't have the right to make decisions for other people.
  Period.  No matter how high-minded and idealistic you want to portray
  it, at the end of the day you are proposing to use force to coerce
  another man into doing your will.  You may stop them from using force
  or fraud against others, but an adult may make decisions for
  themselves, even if they are bad.  I am reminded of a great line from
  the HBO show Deadwood, "Can you let me go to hell the way I want to?"

• You can't make better decisions for other people, even if you
  are smarter, because every person has different wants, needs, values,
  etc., and thus make trade-offs differently.  Tedy Bruschi of the
  Patriots is willing to take post-stroke risks by playing pro football again I would never take, but that doesn't mean its a incorrect decision for him.

• Technocratic idealists ALWAYS lose control of the game.  It may
  feel good at first when the trains start running on time, but the
  technocrats are soon swept away by the thugs, and the patina of
  idealism is swept away, and only fascism is left.  Interestingly, the
  technocrats always cry "our only mistake was letting those other guys
  take control".  No, the mistake was accepting the right to use force on
  another man.  Everything after that was inevitable.

Everyone has had a turn running the place (except libertarians, I might observe) and everyone has screwed things up.

** I am amazed I have not posted a rant on homeopathic medicine, but searching through my archives, I don't find anything.  If you don't know, here is the fast answer why homeopathy is silly.  Advocates of homeopathy argue that they can make certain substances more effective by diluting them, and the more they dilute them, the more effective they are.  Go to one of their web sites, and you will see dilution rations that translate into having less than one molecule of the active ingredient in a mass of water the volume of all the world's oceans.  Advocates argue that even though the molecules are gone, some sort of resonance remains.  Uhh, right.

I am late in linking this, but it is an amazing story of what happens when we give politicians power over our lives.  The story is about Trent Lott's silly vendetta against State Farm insurance, which all started when State Farm took the ridiculous step of not paying off on flood damage to Trent Lott's home after Katrina just because ... yes, this is going to sound like a really weak excuse ... the policy did not cover flood damage.  Can you imagine?  Of course, it is clear that Lott knew this in advance, since he had sought out and obtained a separate flood insurance policy.  But still.  Don't they understand lèse majesté?

The Mississippian was "infuriated" by the insurance industry's
refusal to shell out for certain Katrina claims, most notably his own.
So Mr. Lott is spearheading a ferocious campaign of political revenge
that would make even Henry Waxman envious"”replete with investigations,
voracious trial lawyers, ambitious state attorneys general and threats
of punitive federal legislation. And like most personal grievances that
get morphed into policy battles, it's ending badly for consumers.

Mr.
Lott's beachfront property in Pascagoula"”one of three homes he
owned"”was swept away entirely by Hurricane Katrina's waters. Like many
Gulf Coast residents, Mr. Lott was soon reminded by his insurer, State
Farm, that his policy only covered wind damage"”not flood damage. The
senator surely knew that, which is why he'd also purchased federal
flood insurance. According to his flood policy that was in effect when
Katrina hit, he was covered up to $350,000 in flood damages, and he
presumably collected in full....

For his part, Mr. Lott has been busy cranking up the pressure in
Washington. Not that he didn't give fair warning. In July of last year,
he placed a call to Chuck Chamness, the CEO of the National Association
of Mutual Insurance Companies, to let the industry know what was
coming. Mr. Chamness later sent a letter to Mr. Lott, summing up the
call. The key passage: "Your comment that you will dedicate your next
term of office to 'bringing down State Farm and the industry' through
all means available to you, including legislation designed to harm the
property/casualty insurance industry, was very unsettling, to say the
least."

One addition to this story which I think occurred after it was written:  State Farm, for obvious reasons, decided they were going to exit the property insurance business in Mississippi.  The Mississippi legislature, in an act right out of Atlas Shrugged, is considering legislation designed to prevent them from exiting the business.  Judge Smales (of Caddyshack fame) summarized the situation for State Farm:  "You'll have nothing and like it."

Incredibly, out of 32 initial NCAA championship games, there were only two real upsets (I don't count 9 beating 8 as a real upset).  Maybe my memory is faulty, but that seems like a really low number by historical standards.   Conventional wisdom would hold that we should probably see more rather than less upsets, as early flight to the NBA of the top players has tended to level the playing field out.

Who would have ever predicted this...

BARNET, VT. -- Sara Demetry thought she had found a way to atone for her personal contribution to global warming.

The
psychotherapist clicked on a website that helped her calculate how much
heat-trapping carbon dioxide she and her fiance emitted each year,
mostly by driving and heating their home. Then she paid $150 to e-BlueHorizons.com, a company that promises to offset emissions.

But Demetry's
money did not make as much difference as she thought it would. While
half of it went to plant trees to absorb carbon dioxide, the other half
went to a Bethlehem, N.H., facility that destroys methane -- a gas that
contributes to global warming. The facility has been operating since
2001 -- years before the company began selling offsets -- and Demetry's money did not lead the company to destroy any more methane than it would have anyway.

Well, I predicted it:

I don't have any inside information on TerraPass, the company made
famous by providing the $399.75 certificates that offset all your
emissions for a year.  I do know that the numbers don't seem to add up,
as I wrote here and Protein Wisdom similarly wrote here.

However, I thought about their business model some (since I have been on a role with new business models) and it strikes me that it is brilliant.  Because I am almost positive that they are (legally) reselling the same carbon credits at least three times!...

1. Their energy projects produce electricity, which they sell to
   consumers.  Since the
   electricity is often expensive, they sell it as "CO2-free"
   electricity.  This is possible in some sates -- for example in Texas,
   where Whole Foods made headlines by buying only CO2-free power.  So the
   carbon offset is in the bundle that they sell to
   electricity customers.  That is sale number one. 
2. The company most assuredly seeks out and gets
   government subsidies.  These subsidies are based on the power being
   "CO2-free".  This is sale number two, in exchange for subsidies. 
3. They still have to finance the initial construction of the plant, though.  Regular heartless
   investors require a, you know, return on capital.  So Terrapass
   finances their projects in part by selling these little certificates that you
   saw at the Oscars.  This is a way of financing their plants from people
   to whom they don't have to pay dividends or interest "”just the feel-good
   sense of abatement.  This is the third sale of the carbon credits.

My guess is that the majority of carbon offsets sold are for projects that would have gone ahead anyway, without the purchase of the offset (for example, planting trees or building power plants).  In this case, e-BlueHorizons is doing #3 after the plant was commissioned.   Caveat Emptor.  HT: Maggie's Farm

Apparently the media tried to make a controversy out of Curt Schilling's announcement he would enter free agency at the end of the year.  This is part of his response, from his blog (emphasis added):

Now we fast forward a bit and we have what appears to be
"˜controversy' because the Red Sox do not extend my contract when alls
said and done, and I am going to file for free agency at years end.
Again contrary to "˜expert' opinions and views this was never a "˜gun to
the head' situation, the Sox knew this and I knew it. It really was
very simple for both sides. We spoke at length, Theo, Mr. Henry, Mr
Werner and I all spoke at some point and at no time, and let me
reiterate that, at NO time, were there ever any hard feelings, ill
will, or loud exchanges.

The Red Sox owe me nothing. They've paid me over 40 million dollars
for what amounts to two seasons worth of starts. They didn't ask for a
refund in "˜05 when I couldn't get my mother out, and on top of that
they've been respectful of my family at every turn.

I wanted to remain in Boston to finish my career, I made that clear
to them. They made it clear to me that if it wasn't for the money this
would be a done deal. I get that, it's not hard to understand. If I was
to sign a 4 million dollar deal I'd be signed already. The 13 million
we had talked about was money they were looking at as "˜available', so
this had changed their plans if they were to sign me.

Here is the pick distributions for out 91 brackets.  The number to the right of the schools name is the number of players who picked that team to win that round/game:

We had 91 brackets submitted this year for our NCAA bracket challenge, which is great!  Let the fun begin.

PS:  Based on past history, my current rank (in a 91-way tie for first) is probably the last time I will be front.

Note: This post sticky through 3/16.  Look below for newest posts.

We had a blast with it last year, so back by popular demand is the annual Coyote Blog
NCAA Bracket Challenge.  Yes, I know that many of you are bracketed
out, but for those of you who are self-employed and don't have an
office pool to join or who just can't get enough of turning in
brackets, this pool is offered as my public service. 

Last year we had over fifty entries, and we expect more this year.  Everyone is welcome, so send the link to friends as well.  There is no charge to join in and
I have chosen a service with the absolutely least intrusive log-in
(name, email, password only) and no spam.  The only thing I ask is
that, since my kids are participating, try to keep the team names and
board chat fairly clean.

To join, go to http://www.pickhoops.com/Coyote and sign up, then enter your bracket.

Scoring is as follows:

Round 1 correct picks:  1 points
Round 2:  2
Round 3:  4
Round 4:  6
Round 5:  8
Round 6:  10

Special March Madness scoring bonus: If you correctly pick the underdog in any round (ie,
the team with the higher number seed) to win, then you receive bonus
points for that correct pick equal to the difference in the two team's
seeds.  So don't be afraid to go for the long-shots!

Bracket entry appears to be open.  Online bracket entry closes Thursday, March 15th at 11:30am EDT.  Be sure to get your brackets in early.

Update: I have managed a lot of bracket pools over the years, with a lot of tools.  I would not hesitate to recommend Pickhoops.com.  Least intrusive, cheap, good tools, easy to use.

Necessity is the mother of invention.  And who can think of an indignity humans suffer that is worse than having to get up from the couch to get a beer?  Via Market Power, the beer-launching refrigerator.  See the video here.

Apparently yesterday was Pi day (3/14) and my son's class had a contest to recite pi to the most digits.  I presumed that my son didn't really participate, but then he serenaded me in the car with the first 70 or so digits that he apparently already knew by heart.  Unfortunately, he lost to someone who knew 105.  The really geeky part was that I was kind of jealous.

Postscript: But I do know the motto on a Budweiser can by heart:  This is the famous Budweiser beer.  We know of no other brand produced by any other brewer that costs so much to brew and age.  Our exclusive beechwood aging produces a taste, a smoothness, and a drinkability you will find in not other beer at any price.

A while back, I mentioned that the police had, for the first time in my life, actually pursued and caught someone who had stolen my or my company's property.  The county has a process of notifying victims of progress in this case, and to this end I received a copy of their plea agreement.  They plead guilty to 2nd degree burglary, which the letter says is a "non-dangerous, non-repetitive 3rd degree felony".  However, I must not understand the word "non-repetitive" since the guilty parties plead guilty to five counts of this non-repetitive crime!

And there is no better place to find them than in the NY Times:

So there are these two muffins baking in an oven. One of them yells, "Wow, it's hot in here!"And the other muffin replies: "Holy cow! A talking muffin!"

Did that alleged joke make you laugh? I would guess (and hope) not.

Well, I laughed, and I was alone in the room.  I am fine if you don't think it is funny, so to guess that I did not find it funny is fine, but to hope so?

I have always thought the logic of shareholder law suits were crazy to start with, and even crazier given that shareholder suits over loss of stock value tend to result in ... declining stock value.

I have never been able to justify most lawsuits by shareholders
against companies in which they own shares.  Any successful verdict
would effectively come out of the pockets of the company's owners who
are.. the shareholders.  So in effect, shareholders are suing
themselves, and, win or lose, they as a group end up with less than if
the suit had never been started, since a good chunk of the payout goes
to the lawyers.  The only way these suits make financial sense (except
to the lawyers, like Bill Lerach) is if only a small subset of the
shareholders participate, and then these are just vehicles for
transferring money from half the shareholders to the other half, or in
other words from one wronged party that does not engage in litigation
to another wronged party who are aggressively litigious.  Is there
really justice here?

OK, you could argue that many of these shareholders are not suing
themselves, because they are past shareholders that dumped their stock
at a loss.  But given these facts, these suits are even less fair.  If
these suits are often made by past shareholders who held stock at the
time certain wrongs were committed, they are paid by current and future
shareholders, who may well have not even owned the company at the time
of the abuses, and may in fact be participating in cleaning the company
up.  So their argument is that because the company was run unethically
when I owned it, I am going to sue the people who bought it from me and
cleaned it up for my damages?  Though it never happens, the more fair
approach would be for current shareholders to sue past shareholders for
the mess they left.

Tom Kirkendall quotes a related notion from the Economist:

This suggests to The Economist the need for a new Apple rule
to guide prosecutors"”at least in cases, such as backdating, where the
main supposed victim is a company's shareholders. Our rule: if a
criminal prosecution is likely to hurt a company's share price, then
don't prosecute.

Are we serious? Well, we think it's worth a discussion . . .
Cost-benefit analysis is largely absent from America's approach to
regulating business wrongdoing, not only in criminal prosecutions, and
that is probably one of the main reasons why America's capital markets
are indeed losing their competitive edge. At the very least,
encouraging the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange
Commission to employ a few less lawyers and a few more economists would
be a step in the right direction.

I'm am currently listening to a ski resort guy talking about climate.  I can feel his pain, as spring temperatures have certainly warmed in the mountains of California, hurting the ski industry.  Whether that is from CO2, cyclical variations, or changing output from the sun is a complicated question.  I read a lot about climate, and try to be thoughtful about it.  But, do I really have to be lectured to by someone who is lamenting CO2 emissions that are destroying the ozone layer?

Well, we libertarians must be losing the battle, if these are all the rights I have left as a taxpayer:

Today at 10am the Republican Study Committee will
introduce a Tax Payers Bill of Rights with the aim of getting
bi-partisan support for the principles of such a bill of rights and
incorporating them in future legislation. The principles are:

1 Taxpayers have a right to have a federal government that does not grow beyond their ability to pay for it.
2 Taxpayers have a right to receive back each dollar that they entrust to the government for their retirement.
3 Taxpayers have a right to expect the government to balance the budget without having their taxes raised.
4 Taxpayers have a right to a simple, fair tax code that they can understand.

This is pretty thin soup, particularly from the party that once hailed itself as the party of small government.  I can't really disagree any of this stuff, but it really constitutes a low bar, and it is even scarier that this will probably be controversial.  In particular, #2 is a joke.  Getting all your principal back from forty year old retirement investments basically means that all your retirement income was invested by the government at a 0% rate of return.  Unfortunately, as I ran the numbers a while back, a 0% rate of return would actually be an improvement for Social Security.

This is really, really pathetic.

It's fun.  It's free.  It's really easy (and the registration is unintrusive).

To join, go to http://www.pickhoops.com/Coyote and sign up, then enter your bracket.

Scoring is as follows:

Round 1 correct picks:  1 points
Round 2:  2
Round 3:  4
Round 4:  6
Round 5:  8
Round 6:  10

Special March Madness scoring bonus: If you correctly pick the underdog in any round (ie,
the team with the higher number seed) to win, then you receive bonus
points for that correct pick equal to the difference in the two team's
seeds.  So don't be afraid to go for the long-shots!

Online bracket entry closes
Thursday, March 15th at 11:30am EDT.  Be sure to get your brackets in
early.

Dear Rest-of-the-Country:

    How are all those VCR clocks?  Got them set back an hour yet?

Sincerely,
Arizona

I have had experience on several occasions attempting to bring private solutions (at no cost to the city government) to certain municipal problems.  The general approach to such offers, which seems to be similar in every city I have lived in, is to get together a meeting of every single government authority that could possibly have some tangential jurisdiction over the particular problem (e.g, city, county, state, highways, parks, water, environment, etc. etc.).  In this meeting, the discussion goes around the table, with every single participant adding another reason why the proposal is a problem and/or another roadblock or required approval.  This is not an exaggeration - I can't remember one person in such a meeting try to fix a problem or make something happen.  Everyone in government has an incentive system, it seems, that revolves around avoiding risk and preventing change. 

That is why I know that this story is typical of government, not an aberration:

LSU hospital officials began planning for a temporary network of
neighborhood clinics in early November 2005, barely two months after
Hurricane Katrina knocked Charity Hospital out of commission and threw
health-care services for many of the city's uninsured into disarray.

Eight months later, in late June and early July, FEMA delivered the
trailers to New Orleans, with the $761,000 bill picked up by the
federal government.

It wasn't until last week that the New Orleans City Council agreed
to temporarily waive the city's zoning code to allow the trailers to be
located at six schools around the city -- three on the east bank and
three in Algiers -- for two years.

In between fell more than 100 meetings and dozens of e-mails about
the issue involving LSU executives and officials at the city, state and
federal levels. And the journey is not over. The zoning waivers still
need approval from Mayor Ray Nagin, which cannot occur until next week
at the earliest, as well as permits from the city that could take up to
six months to acquire.

The second 12 hours were a LOT better.

20,000 FEMA trailers panic-purchased after Katrina, now (maybe) up for sale.  Via AP

Don Boudreaux argues that we should not retaliate vs. countries who subsidize exports to the US.

I know of no cases in which a country was impoverished, or even

measurably damaged, by its refusal to "retaliate" against alleged

instances of foreign subsidies. This fact, combined with the ease of

abusing the ability to accuse foreign rivals of being subsidized,

counsels strongly in favor of our own government turning a deaf ear to

such accusations.

I have never, ever, ever understood how the average person in the US could actually get mad that a foreign government taxes its people for the sole purpose of subsidizing lower prices in the US.  I have the same reaction to "dumping" accusations, where folks get upset that some foreign company is allegedly selling its products in the US below cost.   Instead of complaining, I think we should just say "thanks."  And maybe "cha-ching!"  Nothing like getter over on the taxpayers of China or Japan. 

Via Hit and Run:

A blistering Justice Department report accuses the FBI of
underreporting its use of the Patriot Act to force businesses to turn
over customer information in terrorism cases....The report, to be
released Friday, also says the FBI failed to send follow-up subpoenas
to telecommunications firms that were told to expect them.....

Overall,
the FBI underreported the number of national security letters it issued
by about 20 percent between 2003 and 2005..... In 2005 alone, the FBI
delivered a total of 9,254 letters relating to 3,501 U.S. citizens and
legal residents.

The Patriot Act....allows the FBI to issue national
security letters without a judge's approval in terrorism and espionage
cases.

Here is my bet:  Even more interesting will be a review of these letters, if that is ever allowed, to see how many really had any burning relation to national security.  My guess is that many of these are being used in drug cases and financial cases that only the most creative FBI agent could twist into a national security situation.

One of the things I didn't really expect when I started blogging was the near flood of press releases I would get from across the political spectrum.  One I got this morning was called "NEW PROPOSED .XXX WEB DOMAIN LEGITIMIZES SMUT."  I had a couple of thoughts reading this release:

• Um, pornography is legal.  I say that only because the whole press release is written in a tone that implies terrorism or serial killing is being facilitated.  In addition to being legal, it is also a very large business on the web and frankly has been an innovator in many areas of e-commerce.  One may find the business unsavory or distasteful, but it is still a legal enterprise.
• I would think that encouraging a separate domain extension for hard core pornography would be something that pornography's opponents would support, sort of like getting the adult film store out of the suburban mall and into the red light district.   I find that internet filter software (which I have on my kids accounts) works pretty well, but I am pretty sure that filtering out an entire domain extension would be a layup.

Comments closed to avoid the inevitable flood of spam porn links.

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