Quotulatiousness

April 26, 2010

P.J. O’Rourke definitely wasn’t an “A” student

Filed under: Education, Government, Humour, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:11

At least, based on his apparent contempt for “A” students:

America has made the mistake of letting the A student run things. It was A students who briefly took over the business world during the period of derivatives, credit swaps, and collateralized debt obligations. We’re still reeling from the effects. This is why good businessmen have always adhered to the maxim: “A students work for B students.” Or, as a businessman friend of mine put it, “B students work for C students — A students teach.”

It was a bunch of A students at the Defense Department who planned the syllabus for the Iraq war, and to hell with what happened to the Iraqi Class of ’03 after they’d graduated from Shock and Awe.

The U.S. tax code was written by A students. Every April 15 we have to pay somebody who got an A in accounting to keep ourselves from being sent to jail.

Now there’s health care reform — just the kind of thing that would earn an A on a term paper from that twerp of a grad student who teaches Econ 101.

Why are A students so hateful? I’m sure up at Harvard, over at the New York Times, and inside the White House they think we just envy their smarts. Maybe we are resentful clods gawking with bitter incomprehension at the intellectual magnificence of our betters. If so, why are our betters spending so much time nervously insisting that they’re smarter than Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement? They are. You can look it up (if you have a fancy education the way our betters do and know what the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary is). “Smart” has its root in the Old English word for being a pain. The adjective has eight other principal definitions ranging from “brisk” to “fashionable” to “neat.” Only two definitions indicate cleverness — smart as in “clever in talk” and smart as in “clever in looking after one’s own interests.” Don’t get smart with me.

Whole piece here.

March 23, 2010

QotD: The future of Obamacare

Filed under: Health, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:14

There will be court challenges to Obamacare but I doubt if they will be entirely successful. I further find it unlikely that the GOP, if they achieve majority status again, will be able to repeal it. Perhaps a combination of the two but that may be the most unlikely scenario at all.

Prediction? In five years, the Republican party will be embracing Obamacare and will be running on a platform that boasts they are the best party to manage it efficiently.

Rick Moran, “NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE REFORM DONE”, Right Wing Nuthouse, 2010-03-22

March 15, 2010

QotD: Process matters

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:50

Libertarians are process people, something that our political opponents find impossible to believe can be real, rather than disingenuous. So when I say that I think Lawrence v. Texas might be the right result morally but the wrong result legally, it must be that I secretly want sodomy to be illegal, or at the very least don’t care. Or when I am troubled by government intervening in the Chrysler bankruptcy process, it’s because I hate unions. And of course, when I am against post-hoc legal judgments against bankers or their bonuses, it’s just because I’m an apologist for rich people.

But to a libertarian, process matters. Having a good process is better than getting a good outcome, because a good process is one that maximizes your chances of getting good outcomes over time.

Megan McArdle, “The Process of Passing Health Care”, The Atlantic, 2009-12-22

March 3, 2010

QotD: Canada’s national inferiority complex

Filed under: Cancon, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:37

But when I refer to casting off our national inferiority complex, I don’t mean the permission we suddenly seem to have given ourselves to be overjoyed by our nation’s athletic accomplishments. Rather, I’m talking about the way most of our major national policies of the past half-century have really just been masks for our national angst. Multiculturalism, universal health care, soft power diplomacy, economic and cultural nationalism and others are all, in part, efforts to downplay our own fear that we are an insignificant nation. Through them, we reassure ourselves of our moral superiority, especially toward the Americans.

Maybe Vancouver finally made us willing to stop defining ourselves through our belief in giant government programs and our fear and resentment of the United States.

Now, perhaps, we can also give ourselves permission to stop trying to manufacture a distinctly Canadian culture and just let one evolve naturally.

We are not Americans. We are never going to be Americans. No amount of economic or cultural protectionism is going to keep U.S. influences out. But also, American influences were never going to impoverish us or strip our identity away.

Maybe now, with the Olympics over and our new-found national confidence high, we’ll get past our common belief that universal health care makes us a better country and gives us superior care. For far too long we have planned health care through this sort of political filter rather than a medical one.

Perhaps instead of sneering at the Americans about their melting pot approach to immigration and insisting our multicultural approach is superior, we’ll now come to see the two as different sides of the same coin.

I think we have already come to understand that while we were tremendous peacekeepers under the UN, what the world needs now is peacemakers. There was nothing wrong with our old role. We were very good at it. But now we have moved on. We have re-equipped ourselves and are getting on with the heavy lifting of fighting in hot spots and bringing aid directly to stricken regions.

Those who still cling to the old notion of Canada as only ever a non-fighting nation, that works only through the UN and cares deeply what the rest of the world thinks of us, have been left behind by events.

Lorne Gunter, “In Vancouver and Whistler, shades of Vimy”, National Post, 2010-03-03

February 23, 2010

BBC accused of bias in euthanasia debate

Filed under: Britain, Health, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:00

The BBC’s decision to broadcast Terry Pratchett’s speech on euthanasia tribunals is cited as evidence that the corporation is acting as an advocate on this highly emotional issue:

The Care Not Killing Alliance accused the BBC of flouting impartiality rules and adopting a “campaigning stance” in an attempt to step up pressure on the Government to legalise assisted suicide.

The decision to broadcast Sir Terry Pratchett’s speech advocating “euthanasia tribunals” in full earlier this month was an example of unbalanced reporting, the alliance claimed.

Lord Carlile, chairman of the alliance and the Government’s independent reviewer of terror legislation, has demanded a meeting with BBC bosses to seek answers over the “biased” coverage.

In a letter to Sir Michael Lyons, the chairman of the BBC trust, the Liberal Democrat peer also raised questions over the corporation’s failure to inform police that a veteran presenter had confessed to killing his lover on one of its programmes.

H/T to Elizabeth for the link.

February 3, 2010

More on Premier Williams’ medical decision

Filed under: Cancon, Health, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:07

Following up to yesterday’s post on Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams and his decision to seek care out-of-country for his heart condition:

I have always argued that every Canadian should be free to seek treatment wherever he or she wants. Elective or lifesaving, complicated or straightforward, it is none of my business where Danny Williams goes for his operation, or who pays for it.

True, there would be something of a hypocrisy factor at play if Mr. Williams has preached the virtues of Canada’s state-monopoly care and now, when he has to put his faith in the system, he has flown the coop rather than stand in line for a treatment he could receive here.

But we don’t know what exactly is wrong with the brash and charming politician, who is one of the few chunks of flavour in the floury roux of Canadian politics. Perhaps what ails him can only be fixed south of the border — in which case, the province might even have paid for his treatment in a foreign clinic.

The point I am trying to make here is that only because we have turned health care into a political hot potato are any of us even wondering whether the premier is justified in going to an American clinic.

Well, when an ordinary person has to wait months and months just to see a specialist, and then wait even longer for surgery, while the political class can (apparently) get immediate attention and care, it becomes difficult to continue believing that all Canadians are entitled to equal care . . .

I can’t disagree with Lorne Gunter here:

What I resent is the way premiers and prime ministers won’t free you or me to buy insurance that would enable us to procure first-class care in times of need. What I resent is the way many limousine liberals lash us to the mast of the good ship Medicare, then run off to the United States when it’s their lives or their families’ on the line. They are like public school trustees who send their kids to private school.

February 2, 2010

Not the first, certainly not the last

Filed under: Cancon, Health, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:10

Danny Williams, premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, will be having heart surgery later this week. This is a bit of a surprise to most, as he’s known to be a regular exerciser and hasn’t missed time for illness recently. Here’s Kenyon Wallace’s report:

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is to have heart surgery in the United States later this week, a press conference this morning is expected to confirm.

Media reports last night suggested the popular 59-year-old Premier has opted not to remain in his home province or country for the scheduled surgery, opting instead for treatment at a U.S. institution. The exact destination is not known.

“I can confirm that Premier Williams did leave the province this morning and will be undergoing heart surgery later this week,” said Mr. Williams’ spokeswoman, Elizabeth Matthews, in an email to the Canadian Press.

Not the first Canadian politician to elect to get medical care in the United States, and (on past experience) he’ll certainly not be the last one either. A cynic might note that the leaders don’t have the same confidence in the Canadian healthcare system that the people do . . . or it might be that politicians see themselves as far too important to have to wait until their turn under our system (where wait times are a quiet shame).

November 25, 2009

QotD: Why Canadian-style healthcare won’t succeed in the United States

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Health, Quotations, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:59

Speaking from immediate personal experience here: Many Americans have romantic visions of Canadian health care but Canadian health care works as it does only because Canadians are deferential to authority and unwilling to complain loudly no matter the situation. The shock of a visit to an ER department will not dent a Canadian’s feckless stoicism. Loud complaints are just another way of drawing undue attention to yourself, this considered extremely rude north of the border; so much so that queue jumpers earn little opprobrium while the man kicking the queue jumper out of line earns frowns of disapproval (again, personal experience as the line enforcer). Consequently, wait times, waiting lists and twelve hours of nothing at the emergency room are just another government thing to be endured.

Like the winter, supposedly.

I am reminded of an observation to the effect an armed society is a polite society. Obama can enact his shitty little elitist plan as he likes; I doubt it will change the American character, at least not before Obama’s shitty little elitist plan is revoked. In the meantime, I pity the fool American medical resident who talks to his or her patients the way I saw patients dealt with at one of downtown Toronto’s elite hospitals yesterday.

Nick Packwood, “Why socialist medicine will fail in the United States”, Ghost of a Flea, 2009-11-24

November 17, 2009

British health care becomes more equal

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Health — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:41

. . . as even celebrities have to wait their turn for a doctor’s care, screaming in pain for hours:

“The racecourse doctor did a good job at the racecourse and gave me as much morphine as she could, but when I got to the hospital I was basically hysterical with pain and they wouldn’t give me any more painkillers.

“The race was at 2.20, and half past midnight was the first time that I saw a doctor. The leg was broken in two places, and the bone had come out through the skin. I’m usually fairly numb with injuries, but this time I was in so much pain that I was just saying, ‘knock me out, knock me out’. Still they wouldn’t give me any painkillers, and they said they would operate in the morning. There were people coming in with twisted ankles getting treated while I’m screaming next door, and they’re basically telling me to wait my turn.”

After a successful operation the following day, Crosse’s ankle swelled as he had not been told to keep it raised. “They came down and asked me why I didn’t have it up and I said no one had told me to,” Crosse says. “I had a very bad night again without enough painkillers to quieten me.”

After two days, Crosse says, he decided that enough was enough. “I thought, I’m getting out of here whatever happens. They told me they would get me an ambulance [to a hospital in Swindon] but they kept me hanging on all day and at 7pm told me I’d have to wait until the morning. I went on the internet and looked up a private ambulance. Basically I had to book my own ambulance to get out of there.”

I’m sure the government will swiftly move to address the issue Crosse raises here — by banning private bookings of ambulances.

November 13, 2009

British emigration woes

Filed under: Britain, Education, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 14:02

Jeremy Clarkson enumerates all the places would-be Ex-pats can’t go:

There’s talk of emigration in the air. It’s everywhere I go. Parties. Work. In the supermarket. My daughter is working herself half to death to get good grades at GSCE and can’t see the point because she won’t be going to university, because she doesn’t have a beak or flippers or a qualification in washing windscreens at the lights. She wonders, often, why we don’t live in America.

[. . .]

It’s a lovely idea, to get out of this stupid, Fairtrade, Brown-stained, Mandelson-skewed, equal-opportunities, multicultural, carbon-neutral, trendily left, regionally assembled, big-government, trilingual, mosque-drenched, all-the-pigs-are-equal, property-is-theft hellhole and set up shop somewhere else. But where?

You can’t go to France because you need to complete 17 forms in triplicate every time you want to build a greenhouse, and you can’t go to Switzerland because you will be reported to your neighbours by the police and subsequently shot in the head if you don’t sweep your lawn properly, and you can’t go to Italy because you’ll soon tire of waking up in the morning to find a horse’s head in your bed because you forgot to give a man called Don a bundle of used notes for “organising” a plumber.

You can’t go to Australia because it’s full of things that will eat you, you can’t go to New Zealand because they don’t accept anyone who is more than 40 and you can’t go to Monte Carlo because they don’t accept anyone who has less than 40 mill. And you can’t go to Spain because you’re not called Del and you weren’t involved in the Walthamstow blag. And you can’t go to Germany . . . because you just can’t.

The Caribbean sounds tempting, but there is no work, which means that one day, whether you like it or not, you’ll end up like all the other expats, with a nose like a burst beetroot, wondering if it’s okay to have a small sharpener at 10 in the morning. And, as I keep explaining to my daughter, we can’t go to America because if you catch a cold over there, the health system is designed in such a way that you end up without a house. Or dead.

October 16, 2009

Olympia Snowe: Mighty Morphing Power Republican!

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:26

David Harsanyi discusses the recently discovered bi-partisan super powers of Olympia Snowe:

It is always curious to hear irascible members of one political party accuse members of the opposing party of “playing politics” as if it were a bad thing. Can you imagine? Politics. In Washington, no less.

As you know, Democrats claim to be above such petty, divisive and low-brow behavior, especially on those days they are running both houses of Congress and the White House. What this country really needs, we are incessantly reminded, are more mavericks. Well, Republican mavericks. Folks who say “yes.”

How starved is the White House to unearth some imaginary bipartisanship on the health care front?

Consider that for possibly the first time in American history, a vote in a Senate committee was the lead story for news organizations across the country, simply because the ideologically bewildered Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, used her inconsequential vote to move forward a government-run health care bill.

Judging from the coverage, you might have thought that Snowe had nailed her 95 theses to the door of the Republican National Committee headquarters rather than sit in a safe seat and habitually vote with Democrats.

“Forget Sarah Palin,” remarked The Associated Press. “The female maverick of the Republican Party is Sen. Olympia Snowe.” CNN’s rational, reasonable, moderate Democrat, Paul Begala, called Snowe the “last rational, reasonable, moderate Republican.”

October 2, 2009

Garrison Keillor’s modest proposal

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:39

This idea will sell very well in the coastal areas, not so well in the heartland:

Conservatives and liberals can agree on the basics — that the nation wallows in debt, that it is shortsighted of the states to cut back on the most essential work of government which is the education of the young, and that somehow we have got to become a more productive nation and less consumptive — but the ruffles and flourishes of Washington seem ever more irrelevant to the crises we face. When an entire major party has excused itself from meaningful debate and a thoughtful U.S. senator like Orrin Hatch no longer finds it important to make sense and an up-and-comer like Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty attacks the president for giving a speech telling schoolchildren to work hard in school and get good grades, one starts to wonder if the country wouldn’t be better off without them and if Republicans should be cut out of the health-care system entirely and simply provided with aspirin and hand sanitizer. Thirty-two percent of the population identifies with the GOP, and if we cut off health care to them, we could probably pay off the deficit in short order.

October 1, 2009

Canada as prescription drug “parasite”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Health, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:07

I guess the discussion on medical costs got boring without bringing international issues into play. Senator Bob Corker got into it with Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett:

An American legislator called Canada “parasitic” on Wednesday for siphoning U.S. dollars to Canada with low prescription drug prices while his country does “all the innovation.”

Canada benefits financially from America’s role as a world leader in medical advances, Republican Sen. Bob Corker charged in an exchange with a Liberal MP as she testified before a U.S. Senate committee.

“One of the things that has troubled me greatly about our system is the fact that we pay more for pharmaceuticals and devices than other countries, and yet it’s not really our country so much that’s the problem, it’s the parasitic relationship that Canada and France and other countries have towards us,” the Tennessee lawmaker told Carolyn Bennett.

Canadian provinces have a financial lever that is a direct result of the single-payer model: if you want to sell your drug in Canada, you have to sell to the government monopoly for each province. The market is small, and there are only a limited number of buyers, so the best price you can get for your product will end up being the price all of the geographical monopolies are willing to pay . . . or you don’t sell into that market at all. Under the circumstances, it’s rational for the companies to sell at close to cost: the bulk of their costs are already sunk in the R&D effort and the regulatory effort to get the drug on to the domestic market.

That doesn’t make the charge any more palatable, but there’s some justice to making it.

September 30, 2009

A different approach to healthcare reform

Filed under: Government, Health, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:03

“John Galt” has a different suggestion for fixing what ails the American healthcare field:

We have some real problems: Bizarre incentives that have led to runaway costs. Rescission. An employer stranglehold over workers’ healthcare. Overuse in the form of care prescribed to protect doctors from lawyers, rather than protecting patients from illness. Arbitrary requirements to carry coverage for other people’s expensive risks.

The truth is that every one of those issues could be addressed — right now, and in a bipartisan fashion — without a single-payer system, a mandate, or any other form of “universal healthcare.” It wouldn’t even take a single massive “reform” bill — just a few simple bills, mostly repealing existing regulation.

But the left has settled on universal healthcare. The “public option.” No other reform is acceptable. No other reform will be permitted. Nothing can actually be fixed if it will lower the number of people who might benefit from a universal system, or if it will reduce national dissatisfaction with market-based care.

It’s quite true that there’s already massive government involvement in the health market, and that a lot of that consists of regulations that have dubious health benefits, but measurable detriments to patients, doctors, and hospitals.

The intersection of the War on Drugs with the government’s role in healthcare, for example, has led to a number of doctors being imprisoned for “inappropriate” prescriptions of painkillers to patients with chronic pain issues. It has also led to a huge number of doctors being afraid to prescribe what their patients actually need, for fear of being charged and convicted of “drug trafficking”. Many patients now suffer prolonged pain because they can’t get an adequate dose of painkillers and can’t find doctors to prescribe them.

All this, in pursuit of getting tough on illicit use of prescription medicine. Government at its finest.

September 10, 2009

Random links

Filed under: Randomness — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:43

A few links that I found interesting or amusing:

  • It was 70 years ago today. Then: “Parliament will decide.” Now: “we require that military deployments … be supported by the Parliament of Canada.” Chalk one up for Mackenzie King, as he was right then and Stephen Harper is right to follow his precedent.
  • Let’s all hear it for “Open Mike” Duvall, former California Republican state representative. Everyone needs standards, and Duvall sets a very low one indeed.
  • The Minnesota Vikings cut WR Bobby Wade (in spite of him having taken a big pay cut to stay with the team this season) and replace him with former Philadelphia Eagles/New England Patriots WR Greg Ellis (who played for Brad Childress).
  • Wi-Fi Isn’t the Best Way to Network…Right?
  • The CBC shocks us all . . . and decides to broadcast a program that offends certain groups in Quebec.
  • Two Royal Marine officers traverse the Northwest Passage in an open boat.
  • Thinner is not cheaper: the paternalistic urge to get us all to lose weight won’t make healthcare any less expensive.

Oh, and last, but not least, “The Guild” Season 3, Episode 2 (belated H/T to Ghost of a Flea for bringing it to my attention):

<br /><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&#038;vid=bdab0fe5-ecc7-4f5e-a946-feefa45d531b" target="_new" title="Season 3 - Episode 2: Anarchy!">Video: Season 3 &#8211; Episode 2: Anarchy!</a>

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress