Safe Harbor

Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas time and everything that goes with it, the carols, the candles, the shopping/wrapping/gifting mayhem, chocolate, hard candies, the music, and the expectant waiting for the Christ child. I will even tolerate small doses of Gene Autry.

 

But THIS moment on the calendar is my favorite, when the commercialism is no longer lurking under the tree. When the shepherds are back to their flocks and the Magi have not yet arrived. It feels like having reached a quiet anchorage, sheltered from the maelstrom of holiday havoc. The tree stands in silent splendor. A cup of tea warms my fingers. And the peace promised by the angels finally falls and settles and stays for however long this moment lasts.

 

In other years we would go on retreat during this time, taking planners and Bibles and reflecting on the year gone, and setting sights on the one to come. Today the dog is by the fire and I can't think of any better retreat than right here at home.

 

In this moment, may you encounter that peace of promise, drink a cup of fulfillment. May you find in these fleeting days your own safe harbor.

 

 

 

As I was saying...

From the editors of the Merced Sun Star newspaper:

 

http://www.mercedsunstar.com/181/story/1213615.html

Tuition and Taxes

from letter to the Merced Sun-Star newspaper:

 

The UC Regents on Thursday made news by raising the tuition that students will pay an additional 32 percent, claiming huge deficits.

What the Regents, supposedly the smartest people in any room, don't seem to get is that shrinking their market share is no way to grow a business...

http://www.mercedsunstar.com/180/story/1185109.html

 

Hasan in the dock

Having had the misfortune of surviving his suicide rampage at Fort Hood, Major Hasan now faces a criminal trial. The pundits are already predicting the impossibility of his finding a fair trial. Here is an idea.

I had originally thought the best thing would be to patch up his wounds and send him back to his unit, turning briefly a blind eye to whatever transpired. But in the interests of providing him a jury of peers, due to him as a citizen of this country, the prosecution and defense should agree to pack his jury with twelve American born Muslim men. Then let us see whether the "religion of peace" can produce anything like justice, or if the vision of Muslim America is anything more than a pipe dream (or a smoke screen).

The Problem with Fairness

Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats have kept pursuing the revival of the Fairness Doctrine that mandated holders of radio station licenses air opposing views. In their view there are a larger number of conservative voices on the air, and it is difficult for liberal ideas to find adequate voice. Regardless of the accuracy of this view, how could anyone oppose the idea that both sides of an issue should be heard? Indeed, if it is such a good idea for broadcast transmission, then what about cable, or the internet?

 

The problem is trying to apply modernist binary logic to complex postmodern issues and arguments. The day of right-left, black-white, good-evil analysis has passed. Genuine good and perfect evil still exist, of course, on at least a cosmic level. But here in the daily world things are more mixed. Evil terrorist groups are funding schools. Good social organizations are driven by self-interest and self-promotion. Corporations, the latest bogey men set up for all to mock, are funding tremendous public programs through their foundations.

 

As regards the Fairness Doctrine, any particular issue of public interest has many facets, not merely two, pro or con. Take California water wars as an example. Is the issue one of environment versus the farm? What about urban versus rural? Is water a resource of financial value to be marketed? To whom does it belong, the Federal government, the State, The people, the land owners over which it flows, the land owners under which it seeps?

 

This is one issue. How can a government board possibly sort out whether fairness has been achieved? What of ideas that come along late in the course of debate? These are often the best and most salient points to be made as dialog continues to mature on an issue. But how can fairness be achieved without giving discussion over totally to the latest arguments. And what could possibly be fair about that?

 

The Fairness Doctrine is doomed by its very aims to be reductionistic, to reduce public discourse to the crudest of arguments and to impoverish the debate it seeks to enrich.

 

Unless, of course, you have a different perspective...

 

 

Another Modest Proposal

There is a flaw in the logic of health care reform leading to cost savings. Improving health can never lower costs. Extending life only leads to increased (albeit deferred) health care costs. In the end everybody still dies. The more advanced the age, the more complex and expensive the health care issues become.

If we really want to lower health care costs in the long run, may I propose increasing risk-based, preferably lethal, activities including:

• Promoting fast food abuse, especially the super size program.
• Encouraging smoking, particularly those forms involving inhaling.
• Televise the 'Darwin Awards.' Some are not aware of their available options.
• Start more wars.
• Advance access to extreme sports. Eliminate helmet laws.
• Lower the age of retirement to fifty. The most lethal year of a man's life is the twelve months immediately following retirement.
• Lower the driving age to ten.
• Give away motorized wheel chairs to finish-off the obese. If they start walking everywhere we will never be rid of them.

Attention to these and other more disasterously productive measures would lead to real savings in health care, unlike the frankly wrong-headed approach currently working its way through Washington. Thank you dear reader, and be careful out there.


PS - Dear reader, if your neighbor rudely reading over your shoulder at the Internet cafe finds this post offensive, please refer him to Jonathan Swift.

Wuzzatigan?

Let me get this straight. Back in December under the last administration GM came to Washington for a hand out. GM was, it was said, too big to let fail.

 

Then later, under the current administration, more bailout was added to that, the taxpayers took property interest in the company, the UAW took more interest (talk about a conflict of interest).

 

And now that it is even bigger, GM is going through what?

 

Bankruptcy!

 

What was all that about?

Jim Grasley

 

 

Out of the Frying Pan...

President Obama today talked about transferring the remaining Gitmo detainees to other countries. I hear there are about 48 prisoners remaining. He wants to send them to countries like Saudi Arabia...

 

And he thinks Guantanamo was abusive? Once the detainees enter a Saudi prison, no one will ever see or hear of them again.

 

Or perhaps they will come to a maximum security facility in the US. Two things are going to happen there. Either they are going to get shivved on the yard, or they are going to open a radical training center in C-block.

 

Now as to security. Jihadists who may have wanted to spring their buddies from Gitmo had to get by either Castro or the Marines. But if the detainees come to, say, San Quentin? It is a relatively minor problem to walk up to the gates and make trouble. And I don't even want to think about visiting day.

 

Every President makes a few gaffs in the first year. And there is no "good" solution to Gitmo. If they weren't jihadists and radicals when they went in, they are now, after years of detainment. But we need to think clearly about how bad they really have it at Guantanamo, and whether our compassionate solutions are not many times worse for them, and more to the point, for all of us.

 

The Triumph of Style over Substance

The media on both right and left fall into a fit whenever the President meets a new world leader. Did he shake hands? Did he bow? How low was the bow? Did it involve a cheek buss?

 

Granted, it is a measure more important than the First Lady's wardrobe choices, but still in the realm of style and symbolism.

 

When are we going to focus on what is actually said to these leaders? And if we knew, would it then be a matter of substantive policy bulwarks, or merely the latest daily verbal stylings, full of sound and fury, but in the end signifying nothing?

 

 

 

And Your Point Is...

Today's report about the emergency room abuses in Ausin, TX was of course shocking. That 9 individuals could rack up 2700 ER visits in six years pushes the limits of credulity. Do these people have no life?

 

But then we begin to ask questions.  Where are you going to take this story?

 

Well, of course we need nationalized health care to limit these abuses. Don't you see how broken the healthcare system is? The national evening news suggested controls to stop abuses so "legitimate" ER cases would get their due attention.

 

There is one reason these abuses happened, and it doesn't have to do with the 3 homeless people or the 7 mental people among the 9 "offenders"

 

In a word, the reason is EMTALA, the law that says persons presenting to ERs across the nation MUST be treated without regard to ability to pay. It is a federal regulation, an unfunded mandate from the national healthcare system.

 

Of course the healthcare system is broken. My only question is, who made it broke?

 

 

 

Where Do You Plug This Thing In?

It's been reported that battery powered vehicles use more energy per mile traveled than gas only vehicles. It costs energy to generate energy, there is a large loss in long distance transmission, more in step-down to usable voltages, more yet in battery charging, and finally some inevitable inefficiency in the electric car itself.

Nevertheless, some put electric car energy efficiency at 25%, and conventional vehicle running at 25mpg at 15%. And gasoline has transmission overhead of its own, too, in the form of tank trucks. [check Cecil Adams' article at http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2759/are-electric-cars-really-more-energy-efficient]

Of course, if you live in the Pacific Northwest and use Hydro-power, bully for you. If you are next door to Nevada Solar One and can jack into that source, terrific.

The problem no one is talking about is generation capacity. We are using all the power we make now to power our ipods, air conditioners, traffic lights, beer coolers and super computers, etc. In California the Public Utilities Commission has forced the utility companies to dismantle excess power generation facilities. Surplus assets. Deregulation. Does anyone remember rolling blackouts? Flex your power now?

So everyone puts a Tesla or a Volt in the garage and then what? There is not enough generation capacity in the international power grid to ramp up even a partial replacement of the gasoline used in our cars. Would somebody please build a new power plant in California?

Anyone...?

Anyone at all...?

Exceutive FIAT

When the car companies started beggng alms at Washington, I remember people saying we had to keep GM, Ford and Chrysler afloat because of jobs and because we clearly had to have something to drive.

 

At the time I thought it silly. Has Toyota actually shipped a car to the US in the last decade? My wife's Chevy Prizm was built 114 miles from here at a Toyota plant in Fremont, CA. Built in America by Americans for Americans to American (no wait, California) standards in a Japanese plant.

 

I thought at the time that just the thing to would be big three bancruptcies followed by reorganization followed by acquisition by Toyota or Mercedes. If Detroit can't run a car company someone else will.

 

But now I see the wisdom of this new paradigm. US tax payers (not us per se, but the next generation of tax slaves) dump billions into an industry whose management can't find its socks. Then we turn around and give Chrysler GRATIS to Fiat.

 

Fiat!?

 

Hey, maybe Zastava has grown tired of making Yugos and wants to take a crack at the Explorer.

 

Bonuses are a good thing

Everyone in Washington DC is up in arms about the AIG executive bonuses. How distasteful. How wasteful.

They may be the best spent $160 million in the trillion dollar stim package.

After all, who better knows what to do with a couple million in cash? AIG execs will buy Escalades, Beneteaus, and Real estate. When they run out of luxury items to buy, they will still have money to invest in business ventures. Spare change will wind up in banks where all the rest of us can borrow it at interest.

What not a single AIG exec is going to do is go into the backyard and bury it.

As for the rest of the stimulus, two words... shovel ready.