On Externalities, Health Care, and Beer Summits

OK, so here goes. Does anyone remember Hillary's campaign stop at a townie bar in rural West Virginia? You know, the one where, good uber beer-Democrat that she is, she was downing shots? God, I can't find the link. Man, I would have given my right arm to be at that event. Can you imagine? Doing shots with Hill?? I would, uhhh, not be getting up early the next morning, I don't think.

Maybe it was Pennsylvania. Ahhh!!! Yes, here it is:

Anyways, I got to thinking. Why would anyone question why the Vice President would be at the Beer Summit? I mean, it's Joey B., for Christ's sake. It wouldn't really be a Beer Summit without him.

Come to think of it, I think that the Beer Summit should be a widely implemented practice (A best practice, if you will) thoughout Corporate America. I think that colleagues should hold weekly, no, thrice-weekly, Beer Summits. This would improve employee morale, and thereby improve productivity. I'm being serious. There's no miscommunication, rivalry, or even hatred that a couple cold ones can't cure. Hell, I'll even pick up the tab for the pretzels.

So....What is an externality, you ask? Let's say that my brother is a resident of the state of Ohio. And in the state of Ohio there exists a car manufacturer about 25 miles downstream from where my brother lives. I happen to live in the Great, Good, and Benevolent Commonwealth of Virginia (Where on Earth else would I live?) I decide to buy a car from the Ohio manufacturer. So, I give the car company $25,000 and the car company gives me a car. Done. Right?

Not exactly. As a result of the manufacturing of that car, chemical waste makes it's way in to the stream and makes its way down to my brother's neighborhood. In addition, the air pollution emitted from the car company's smokestacks spreads throughout the neighboring counties. Those aspects of the transaction have a negative impact on my brother. But why should my brother be impacted by the transaction at all when he was not a party to it in the first place? Well, according to the basic tenets of capitalism, he shouldn't be. (And don't you dare tell me that he can pack up and move. Follow that argument down the path a couple steps. Pretty soon, nobody has any place to live).

What I have just described is called an externality. There will always be externalities associated with many, many, many economic activities. And that, my friends, is why no country in the world will ever have a 100% capitalist, perfectly free market. Look it up in the Index of Economic Feedom. Such a thing does not exist. Nor has it ever existed. Sorry, my RLC (Republican, Libertatarian, Conservative) Friends. It's just never gonna happen.

So, what does all of this have to do with Health Care? Well, besides the fact that the consumption of hard liquor does serious damage to one's liver (this means you, Hillary!), I will attempt to provide that answer in my next post.

Enjoy your beers.

Somebody Needs a Reality Slap!!

I guess this guy didn't see how the stock market went up yesterday on the news of this program's success.....Oooops!!!!!


Is Somebody Lying About “Cash for Clunkers”? - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com


The numbers just don’t seem to add up.
The “Cash for Clunkers” program gives roughly a $4,000 subsidy when a person trades in a clunker for a new car that gets better gas mileage.
Congress set aside $1 billion to fund the program. If all of that money was going to pay these subsidies, there would be enough money to pay for 250,000 clunkers.
The program went into place on July 24th. One week later, the program was said to be out of money.
In 2006, before the current ills of the automakers, the average number of new cars sold in a week in the United States was 125,000.
So if you believe the numbers, sales involving clunkers as trade-ins last week represented more than two times the weekly sales of new vehicles when the industry was healthy.
Maybe that is possible, but something just does not smell right to me, especially because at the start of the week no one seemed to be worried that the Clunkers program would run out of money (especially not me!), so there was no reason to rush out and take advantage of it.

The President's New 'Best Friends'

Obama's New 'Best Friends' - Page 1 - The Daily Beast

Fifty percent of Americans disapprove of the president’s health-care
efforts to date, compared to 44 percent who approve—echoing the 55 percent who
disapprove of Obama’s handling of the federal deficit

.......

This should be a wakeup call for both the Obama administration and
congressional Democrats. But the only people who seem to be listening
are the Blue Dog Democrats, and a small bipartisan group of Senate
centrists.
Attacked as villains by liberals and accused of slowing down the
legislation’s passage, they are the unsung heroes of health-care reform. They
are not trying to kill Obama’s initiative; they are trying to save
it.

........

They may be the only ones in Washington taking President Obama at his word
that any health-care plan must be deficit neutral. House Democrats took a hit
when the Congressional Budget Office announced that the liberal plan would add
billions of new annual costs to the current system. Congressman Charles Rangel’s
(D-NY) proposed surcharge tax on top earners likewise ran counter to desired
narratives when it became evident that it meant the top combined tax rate in
states like New York and California could approach 60 percent, feeding into
Republican campaign-era claims about Obama’s incipient socialism. Centrists helped kill the surcharge and expanded the number of small
businesses that would be exempted from providing compulsory coverage. And a
proposed Independent Medicare Advisory Board would establish a bipartisan
framework to recommend "entitlement" overhaul savings that would be presented to
the president directly, helping achieve the promised deficit
reduction.+


But perhaps the most significant contribution of this centrist
coalition to the health-care debate might be the replacement of the
controversial “public option” with a nonprofit private cooperative plan, based
on American models that have existed at the community level for decades. This
simple switch would single-handedly defang conservative fear-mongering about the
national socialization of health
care. It would likewise achieve many of the practical goals
of the public option, without acquiescing to the larger ideological goal
advanced by liberals. This should be considered a clear win-win
proposition.

.......With a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate and a
256-seat majority in the House, it's no wonder that some liberal Democrats want
to flex their legislative muscle with a partisan bill that ignores the need to
reach out to the center. But they would be giving into the same hyper-partisan
temptations that led to the repudiation of Tom DeLay’s conservative Congress. It
might be emotionally satisfying, but it's bad long-term
politics.
They should also be chastened by a look at American
history. Every major entitlement expansion or overhaul in the past enjoyed broad
bipartisan support. FDR’s Social Security Act earned the support of 81 House
Republicans and 16 GOP senators. LBJ’s expansions in 1965 had the support of 70
House Republicans and 16 Senate Republicans. Even the Newt Gingrich-led 1996
Welfare reform enjoyed the support of 101 Democratic votes.
To have as
historically significant and difficult a piece of legislation as health-care
reform pass only along party lines would not only undercut Obama’s centrist
appeals, it would constitute a considerable long-term practical obstacle to the
legislation’s implementation. It would make health-care reform a lasting
political division.

Surprising Numbers From Gallup

Political Party Affiliation: 30 States Blue, 4 Red in 2009 So Far

Bottom Line
Since Obama was inaugurated, not much has changed in the political party landscape at the state level -- the Democratic Party continues to hold a solid advantage in party identification in most states and in the nation as a whole. While the size of the Democratic advantage at the national level shrunk in recent months, this has been due to an increase in independent identification rather than an increase in Republican support. That finding is echoed here given that the total number of solid and leaning Republican states remains unchanged from last year. While the Republican Party is still able to compete in elections if they enjoy greater turnout from their supporters or greater support for its candidates from independent voters, the deck is clearly stacked in the Democratic Party's favor for now.

End of the Line for Dems in VA?

This is a shame -- Deeds would be a good governor. However, swing voters, and there are a lot of them in a swing state like Virginia, are not real happy with the Dems in Washington right now.



RealClearPolitics - Fall Eyes on Virginia

Virginia will be the center of political attention this fall, thanks to the first statewide election in a battleground state since the 2008 presidential election.
"Here we go again," said Larry Larsen, an independent voter accustomed to national attention for Virginia races.

November's gubernatorial race matches former state Attorney General Bob McDonnell, a Republican, and state Sen. Creigh Deeds, a Democrat.
A SurveyUSA poll last week gave McDonnell a 15-point lead. RealClearPolitics shows McDonnell up 6.3 points, based on aggregate polling data.
"If McDonnell were to win this, the message it sends back to Washington is to slow down," said John Morrison, a Deeds supporter.
Morrison last week was planning a fundraiser for Deeds while taking orders at Piccadilly Print Shop, which he has owned for more than 25 years.
Larsen, a stockbroker and father of six, leans Republican. His issues hinge on the economy: "My income is not what it was last year, and right now it seems that none of the spending solutions are working."

Virginia and New Jersey will hand a report card of sorts to President Obama and the Democrat Congress with their governor's races this fall. Both are leaning Republican, but in politics, anything can change.

Virginia has not had many Republican governors over the past 50 years. This election may interrupt that record.

Vanilla Ain't So Bad

I like Pawlenty. That being said, that is probably an indication that the GOP will not nominate him.


The GOP's Vanilla Option - The Plank

From the article

The full text of his speech isn't readily available yet. But from
descriptions, it sounds like he performed the same dance that has been perfected
by other Republican leaders such as party chairman Michael Steele:
Republicans need to stand up to Obama, get back to their conservative
principles, stop apologizing for their past, and oh, by the way, attract whole
new categories of voters. It doesn't say a lot for GOP outreach efforts
that they think just throwing open the door and not being aggressively hostile
to converts will do the trick, absent some change in message or policy. But the
"not conservative enough" diagnosis of George W. Bush continues to exert an iron
grip on GOP options for the future.
It does appear that Pawlenty talked a lot
about "market-based health reform," but it's not clear yet whether he meant the
kind of relentless return to the pre-insurance
1950s that John McCain's 2008 campaign plan implicitly called for, in which
Americans will be "empowered" to buy individual health care policies, or
something a bit less antediluvian. But if Pawlenty came up with anything new, it
clearly escaped his listeners.
One account
of his speech said he received "mild applause" and a "polite standing ovation."
So it doesn't appear he's become Demosthenes overnight. This is a consistent
problem for the Minnesotan. An upcoming
book on the 2008 campaign (I've gotten a sneak peek) by Dan Balz and Haynes
Johnson confirms that Pawlenty, not Romney or Lieberman or Ridge, was actually
the co-finalist for the 2008 Veep nomination alongside Sarah Palin. McCain's
wizards settled on Palin after concluding that Pawlenty, while "safe," didn't
add much to the ticket's electoral appeal.
And that's Pawlenty's
problem today. If it turns out that 2012 is one of those years when any credible
Republican who is acceptable to the party's dominant conservative wing can win,
then someone who's a right-to-life evangelical with an attractively middle-class
background who has non-disastrously governed a Blue State might make a lot of
sense

When is a "Third Way" NOT a Third Way?

When it comes from Starbucks and Whole Foods

Here is a big giveaway to the unions diguised as a compromise.



The "Third Way" On Card Check - The Atlantic Politics Channel

II. Statement of Principles of Reform "Third Way" Legislation: (1) Secret
Ballot. Guarantee the right of management and unions to require a secret ballot
under all circumstances. (2) Certification and Decertification Treated Equally.
Permit management to initiate a decertification campaign through a secret ballot election
just as employees and unions are presently able to initiate certification and
decertification campaigns. (3) Date Certain for Elections. Guarantee a fixed
time period for the secret-ballot election--i.e., do not permit delays of an
established day for a secret ballot to certify or decertify a union. (4) Equal
Access to Employees for Campaign Purposes. Level playing field for unions and
management to access employees during non-working hours during the campaign
period, e.g., permitting each to make presentations to employees at a neutral
location concerning the issue of whether to form a union. (5) Expedited
Enforcement and Stricter Penalties. Expedited enforcement for serious and
pervasive violations of law by labor and management and stricter penalties for
serious and pervasive violations (e.g., unlawful discharges), including the
penalty of mandatory injunctions when appropriate. (6) Preserve Private
Collective Bargaining. No mandatory arbitration that dictates contract terms,
but stricter penalties and expedited enforcement for violations of good faith
bargaining rules, including an expedited timetable to begin bargaining after
union certification.