What’s interesting in the news today?
Open thread weekend, have fun. 🙂
1. Dirty Harry?
From PJMedia “Jon Ralston continues to examine Sen. Harry Reid’s campaign finance records. What was first a series of questionable payments to his granddaughter totaling about $16,000 is now a larger series of payments adding up to about $31,000.
Reid, who has lately attacked private citizens from the well of the Senate for their campaign contributions, dismisses the controversy and pleads for his enriched granddaughter’s privacy.
“My granddaughter has been the target of harassing phone calls, strangers tracking her down and knocking on her door and negative, unwanted attention on the internet. This has gone too far and it needs to stop now. I deeply regret any role I had in creating this situation but now, as a grandparent, I say enough is enough.
No one should be harassing Ms. Reid, but frankly, Harry Reid is a confirmed liar, so there’s no reason to believe him when he plays the sympathy card. The FEC may not agree that “enough is enough.” Ryan Elisabeth Reid is a grown woman (and a rapper — no kidding), and she did accept the money that her grandfather paid her out of his campaign funds. Perhaps that rap career just needed a cash injection. She may not have known she was receiving campaign funds, but she probably did. Unless granddad paid her in cold, hard cash (which would be interesting!), she knew exactly where the money was coming from. It was on the check, pay stub or in the email she received when the payment processed. Maybe the FEC needs to take a look.”
I doubt Reid worries about the scorn, unwanted attention, and harassment the families of the Koch Bros. have to deal with because of the way he demonizes them. Seems awful hypocritical of Harry to whine here.
Here’s more, from TheFreeBeacon “Another man might have assumed, correctly, that launching a campaign of insult and insinuation against two billionaires would result in renewed attention to his own finances. Not Harry Reid. The Senate Democratic leader since 2005, and the Senate majority leader since 2007, is not one to reflect before speaking. His mouth runs far ahead of his brain.”
“Now, with his majority in danger, his president unpopular, his floor agenda obstructed by members of his own caucus, Reid thrashes about uncontrollably. He calls Obamacare horror stories “untrue.” He says Obamacare numbers are not as high as projected because Americans “are not educated on how to use the Internet.” His Senate Majority PAC launches a $3 million ad campaign tying Republican candidates to two men most Americans have never heard of, two men who, funnily enough, are more popular than Reid.”
“From the floor of the Senate Reid says these two men, Charles and David Koch, are “un-American,” are trying “to buy America.” Without the terrible specter of the Koch brothers Harry Reid would be disarmed. He has no issue for his Democratic Senators to run on; the minimum wage and climate change are not enough. Nor has he another means of inspiring donors to open their checkbooks. He only has fear, fear of the Kochs, fear of extractive industry, fear of the portion of the elite that favors economic freedom. The Koch brothers, Reid says, “rig the system to benefit themselves.” He should know.
The fact that Harry Reid’s political and influence operation includes his five children has been established for some time. A few weeks ago, when I first heard Reid accuse private citizens of being un-American, I dredged up a Los Angeles Times article from 2003 with the headline, “In Nevada, the Name to Know Is Reid.” Chuck Neubauer and Richard T. Cooper’s meticulously researched and reported article begins with the story of the “Clark County Conservation of Land and Natural Resources Act of 2002,” a land bill of the sort that puts people to sleep. “What Reid did not explain” when he introduced the bill in the Senate, Neubauer and Cooper wrote, “was that the bill promised a cavalcade of benefits to real estate developers, corporations, and local institutions that were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees to his sons’ and son-in-law’s firms.” I wonder why he left that part out.”
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2. Standing on principle, or showboating?
From CBSWashingtonLocal “A Carroll County commissioner said she was “willing to go to jail” opening up a board meeting with a prayer despite a federal judge in Maryland ruling the board has to stop with opening meetings with prayers that reference Jesus Christ or any specific deity.
“If we cease to believe that our rights come from God, we cease to be America,” Robin Bartlett Frazier said Thursday. “We’ve been told to be careful. But we’re going to be careful all the way to Communism if we don’t start standing up and saying ‘no.’”
Judge William Quarles Jr. ruled Wednesday that the board must stop opening up its meetings with sectarian prayers. He says that while a lawsuit over the prayers proceeds that the commission may only have non-sectarian prayers.
Frazier said the ruling was an “infringement” on her First Amendment rights.”
And of course it was atheists who objected and filed the suit in the first place.
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3. Here’s an Update on the UNC scandal.
From TheBlaze “Critics of the higher education system in this country and especially those who have long alleged college athletes get special treatment to maintain their academic eligibility have just been given an explosive piece of evidence. It’s severely lacking, has a page with only 146 words and contains grammar errors and misspellings. And it is worthy of an A-.
“It” is a final paper that was submitted by a University of North Carolina athlete and featured in an ESPN report this week. That report detailed two whistleblowers surrounding the the academics scandal that rocked the university this winter, where student athletes were “encouraged” to take “fake” classes in order to pad their grades, raise their GPAs and stay eligible to play sports.
“This is not even close to college work,” whistleblower Mary Willingham told ESPN, “yet this athlete was awarded an A-.”
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4. If this guy is to be believed, and I think he would know, ObamaCare’s worst is yet to come.
From TheWallStJournal “Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm’s elder brother, is a physician who helped design ObamaCare and has been one of its most intense champions. So you may be surprised to learn that in his new book, “Reinventing American Health Care,” he predicts that tens of millions more Americans will lose their medical plans in the coming decade.
In its “You’re the Boss” small-business blog, the New York Times quotes his prediction that by 2025, “fewer than 20 percent of workers in the private sector will receive traditional employer-sponsored health insurance.” As of March 2013 such benefits were available to 85% of full-time private-sector workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If Emanuel is right–and especially if, as he implies, ObamaCare was designed to produce such an outcome–the president’s repeated pledge that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan” was a far more widespread fraud than has yet been realized.
In the next two to three years, Emanuel predicts, “a few big, blue-chip companies will announce their intention to stop providing health insurance. Instead, they will raise salaries substantially or offer large, defined contributions to their workers. Then the floodgates will open.” Small businesses will be even more eager to drop coverage.”
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Wandering Views 
#1. Nothing will come of it, they’re too busy looking for an airplane or the cause of a traffic jam.
#4. It’s part of the plan. A GPS direction to single payer. The government.
And death panels.
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Chas — distraction is the name of the game for all sides in politics and economics.
#4 — this does point to a simple fact; corporations would prefer to be out of the health insurance business. Its simply a bad economics for the auto manufacturers, high tech groups, etc to provide health insurance — the other OECD countries have demonstrated over and over again that some sort of state run health care or health insurance is better for economics and better for the health of the country’s residents.
The spectre of death panels is hyperbole. Corporate health insurance rations on the basis of money. Single payer rations on the basis of need and time. The latter has resulted in better health outcomes.
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#4 — I lived under single payer for 10 years in Norway. I did not like it, even when supported by huge oil revenues. Health care providers were turned into government bureaucrats. Getting care became like a visit to the DMV. Wait times for essential treatments were long. Elderly patients were often told that they were not worth the investment. No thanks.
But thanks to Obamacare, my organization will have to significantly reduce the coverage we offer our staff this year. We just can’t afford it anymore.
Note to president: please stop helping me. I was doing better on my own.
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One of the worst facets of the US healthcare system is that so few people pay anything for their care. Those on Medicaid pay nothing. Those on Medicare with a good supplemental insurance policy pay nothing. Obamacare has outlawed intelligent policies with reasonable deductibles. This is why we pay 18% of GDP for healthcare while in Singapore they spend 3 to 4% of GDP for equal or better care.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Singapore
I am ready for the US to surrender and become a colony of Singapore.
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health care wait times are an interesting criteria. Anglo countries and the Scandinavian countries have high rates whereas Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and France have extremely low rate comparable to the US. Many health care pundits discard the American stats since American wait lists are shortened due to monetary rationing. Those who can’t afford care simply aren’t part of the wait list. For those in the US who fear Nordic style wait list can take comfort in the fact that the ACA is modelled after the Swiss system which has a shorter wait time than the US.
A better comparison would be “unmet need” which combines waiting time, travel costs and income limitations. This comparison favors smaller countries and those with a higher level of income equality. Naturally as a larger country with a high level ofl inequality, the US doesn’t do very well here. Canada with an even more isolated population centers does better … probably because of lower income inequality.
Some interesting reading if you are interested in cross country comparison.
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/health_glance-2011-en/06/index.html?contentType=&itemId=%2Fcontent%2Fchapter%2Fhealth_glance-2011-59-en&mimeType=text%2Fhtml&containerItemId=%2Fcontent%2Fserial%2F19991312&accessItemIds=%2Fcontent%2Fbook%2Fhealth_glance-2011-en
Beyond all this, the simple fact remains corporate America is not interested in paying foe health insurance — it makes the US uncompetitive and it makes their workforce less mobile.
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ricky — your admiration for Putin and places like Singapore make me want to question your pro-democracy credentials.
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HRW, Holland, Switzerland and Germany have healthcare paid for by private insurance companies, not the government. Their systems are much less socialist than the Medicare/Medicaid/50 other federal, state and local program US model. That is why their people can see a doctor while many Canadians and Brits travel to other countries for care.
I have never been for a democracy and neither were the Founding Fathers. Madison created a Constitutional Republic with limited powers. He knew that at the time the electorate was very limited and never dreamed of our universal suffrage.
Fareed Zakaria pointed out in his excellent book, Illiberal Democracy that many nations are not ready for a democratic government and that democracy in those countries would produce less freedom and very bad government. He cited many examples from all over the world. The US belongs on that list. Out people are far too stupid, lazy and greedy to govern themselves. Our government healthcare system alone with all of its waste and inefficiencies is proof we would be far better off if we were governed by a benevolent monarch. Based on track records I would prefer a monarch from Singapore.
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The Swiss is fairly close to what the ACA will probably become. The Dutch and Germans have mandatory deductions from their paycheques to pay not-for-profit insurance providers plus the gov’t pays for health care prevention — maternity leaves, spa treatments, etc. And not much different than medicare the care of the old and infirm is the responsibility of the gov’t. Thus you can see where the ACA is pointed to ….. and given the health outcomes of these countries, its a fairly good model to imitate.
The Brits have a dual health care system. The NHS is a single payer system where the gov’t pays for health care directly but a private system runs parallel to the NHS allowing the rich to jump the queue and provides a release valve to the system. According to the OECD document I linked, the UK has very little unmet health care needs. I was actually surprised because the NHS is much maligned but according to the OECD it does a much better job than most countries. Thus, there’s very little need to go elsewhere for care — their needs are being met.
Canada is a bit unique. In many cases, its actually cheaper and more convenient for the province to transfer patients to a nearby US city than to transfer a patient across the province. Furthermore, our federal system makes it as difficult to transfer patients from one province to an other than it is to move a patient across the border. Hence, its actually cheaper, more convenient and better for the patients in north west Ontario to be transferred to Minneapolis instead of Toronto for more specialized treatment despite the fact Winnipeg, Manitoba is actually closer. In terms of immediate necessary care, its extremely rare for Canadians to cross border shop. According to the OECD survey for unmet needs, Canada does better than some Europeans, there’s really no need to go south to jump the queue.
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HRW, No country on earth ever created anything like Medicare and Medicaid. The Democrats basically wrote blank checks to all health care providers. Medicare cost nine times as much as expected during its first 15 years of existence. US healthcare costs started to skyrocket as soon as Medicare and Medicaid were created. That is why no other nation has ever spent close to 18% of GDP on healthcare.
The ACA is not going to wind up looking like the Swiss or the Germans. Who is going to tell the docs they are getting a big pay cut? Who is going to tell the elderly they have to pay for some of their own care? The ACA outlawed plans that saved money through reasonable deductions. Every change made by the ACA to date has been to increase costs. I know there are supposed to be cuts to provider payments in Medicare in the future. Obama and future presidents will delay or repeal those changes just like Obama has exempted or delayed most painful parts of the ACA. The coalition of the AARP and health care providers is unbeatable. Only a dictator could convert our mess into a rational system like Singapore’s, the Swiss or the Dutch.
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Higher cost do point to a problem of cost containment. But I wouldn’t blame doctor pay for this as American doctors are not overpaid especially when compared to similarly educated people in the US and even when compared to other nations American primary care physicians are slightly underpaid (specialist in the US are paid slightly more) Interestingly doctors in Australia, Canada and the Netherlands are higher paid within their own company (so I’ve got something to complain about here). Cost containment in the US in both the private and public sector has to do with executive and managerial pay and a bloated bureaucracy (larger than other nations) which spends most of its time trying to limit care. Ironically, the US bloated bureaucracy is bloated precisely because they are nickeling and diming the patient to save money.
I’m rather amused that you think the US needs a dictator to institute a system similar to the Dutch who implemented the system in a democracy which tolerates many of the moral failings which you think drag the US down. If the agnostic Dutch can create a rational system all the while tolerating homosexuality, drug use, prostitution, etc then surely the US can. Failing that, maybe the US should throw in the Puritan towel and embrace Dutch tolerance. (I’m half kidding here)
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HRW, I have supported the decriminalization of drug use for several decades. As someone who neither drinks alcoholic beverages or uses drugs (other than Advil), I do not understand why we waste billions trying to prevent drug use while allowing alcoholic beverages to be one of our biggest industries.
The biggest difference between the US (on the one hand) and the countries of Northwestern Europe on the other is intelligence and education.
http://www.sq.4mg.com/NationIQ.htm
Those figures are from 2002 and I believe the gap is wider now. In addition, the US public education system has become much worse than that of Northwest Europe. Our people are both ignorant and stupid and becoming more so each day. Charles Murray has chronicled this (in the Bell Curve), but not as humorously as did Mike Judge in the movie “Idiocracy”.
Concerning perversion, Putin has it right. The important thing is to prevent the promotion of perversion to minors. While I do not favor legalization of prostitution, I think the worst thing about it is how the young can be drawn into that destructive lifestyle. Prostitution is very analogous to perversion.
The Dutch are smart enough to govern themselves, but lack morality. They also could benefit from a dictator from Singapore, and given the performance of Dutch troops in the Balkans, Singapore could probably conquer that country.
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We agree on legalization or decriminalization of marijuana so why not prostitution? Morality from the barrel of the gun is rarely successful. The Dutch know this and have known it for centuries. They were the only western European country to allow for religious freedom as far back as the 17th century. Its not an accident that a Portuguese Jew later excommunicated from the synagogue would find refugee in the Netherlands and then become one of the leading philosophers of his time (Spinoza) The initial age of tolerance also spawned the Dutch Golden Age of art and commerce.
I highly doubt a nation based on tolerance can ever be governed in a Singaporean method. As their lack of Army discipline indicates the Dutch would not be easily governed. When the Dutch right wing has attempted to crack down on the more disorderly elements of their society, they’ve been met by resistance both in the streets and in the legislature.
Its slightly contradictory of you to focus on IQ which is premised upon genetics and the inherited nature of an individual yet you agree with Putin to prevent minors from endorsing a “lifestyle of perversion” that is you think minors can be educated and influenced. And given your despair of the “growing” ignorance of America you should endorse better access to education as opposed to focusing on IQ and natural intelligence.
IQ scores are fairly blunt and not nearly as accurate nor solid as their advocates like to believe. Depending on test versions, context, age, etc scores can be incredibly different. If one wishes to judge the education and the abilities of a nation there are far better tests to look at. Probably the most widely accepted tests are PISA. And yes in these tests the US isn’t’ in the top ten but there may a number of reasons behind this …. none of which can be linked to natural intelligence. First, you should ignore many of the Asian scores — PISA in China only tests certain urban students not an accurate cross section of the population. In China as well as Korea, Taiwan and Japan administrators often resort to various subterfuges to subvert the system (selective and sudden absenteeism). Second, the micro-nations (eg Liechtenstein) have a small sample size and should be disregarded. Finally, the level on income inequality in the US (and some southern European and Latin American nations) has a detrimental effect on the public education system and its students. Given the caveats I just outlined and looking at the PISA results, the US has nothing to be embarrassed about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment#2012
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IQ is based largely on genetics as Murray proved in The Bell Curve. Participation in perversion and prostitution is based on many factors but one’s environment is critical. Putin understands.
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Murray’s been debunked countless times.
IQ test are crude measurements which demonstrate very little except one aspect of intelligence …. an aspect which can be trained and is malleable. Thus, one can’t make any assumptions about groups or sub-groups who test poorly — with the right early intervention, many people can score well.
Race is a vacuous concept that doesn’t correspond to reality. First because inter-ethnically marriage has been widespread for centuries and second modern genetics has indicated that color, shape, eyes etc have little to do with genetic groups. For instance Greeks have more in common with Ethiopians than they do the rest of Europe. Some African groups around Lake Chad have more in common with Europeans than they do with the rest of Africa. Genetically, Japan is two (or more) distinct groups, one identifying closer to Tibetans while the other resembles IndoChina. Southern Italians genetically resemble Iranians more than northern Italians. Western Europeans are more related to Central Asians than to Scandinavians. Asians and Africans are far more diverse than previously thought by the European based academia and hence far more difficult to quantify than the more uniform Europeans. In other words when it comes to DNA, all Chinese don’t look alike but white people do. The above is based on the Y phenotype, I’m sure if we grouped according to X types it would be different.
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Murray’s critics were so intellectually bankrupt, all they could do was quote the sources referenced in The Bell Curve . I have never met a person who actually read The Bell Curve who disagreed with its conclusions.
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HRW, If you read The Bell Curve you will discover that Murray’s work confirmed that good education can raise IQ scores to a point. Nevertheless, there is a genetic component.
I am currently at an NBA game. There is also a genetic component in jumping as anyone who has played serious basketball understands.
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I don’t think you are being fair to their critics. Stephen Gould writes an excellent critique.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/course/topics/curveball.html
I read Murray’s The Decline of White America and although I knew I wouldn’t like it, I was shocked how badly it was written and argued.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/318241663?book_show_action=false
There’s no doubt genetics have a role in athletic ability — it may account why Balkan countries such as Greece and Serbia do as well as African Americans — despite the difference in color they have the same genetics. However, environment also plays a role — if a region gives “hero” status a particular type of athletic, athletic men will naturally pursue that sport thus despite Serbian genetic tendency to basketball skills they may pursue tennis while Greeks pursue basketball or better yet soccer. Jamaicans may have the same genetic material as other African American groups but they purse sprinting whereas Dominicans pursue baseball. For the longest time some Canadians thought blacks were incapable of playing ice hockey now Jerome Ignila (half Japanese and half Nigerian) is approaching the top ten list of all time scorers. In the north west Netherlands, resides a small ethnic group (which I’m a part of) known as Frisians — they are typical blue eyed, blonde, pale, and over 6 feet and generally over 200 lbs (in other words freaks of nature) . They would make excellent basketball, rugby, football, hockey etc players but instead they turn out an inordinate number of soccer players and long track speed skaters.
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The ballgame is over. Blacks scored about 200 points. No Greek or Serb scored. How many Olympic 100 meter dash medals have Greeks and Serbs won in the last 50 years?
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Every male Olympic 100 meter champion in the last 50 years was genetically from West Africa. Some represented the US, some Jamaica, at least one represented England and at least one Canada (we’ll ignore the steroid test). Genetically, they were all West Africans.
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Stephen Gould’s article proves that either he did not read The Bell Curve or that he could not understand it. All of the arguments he made are actually refuted in the book.
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OKC??? Dallas has a German as a leading scorer, don’t know much about Houston or San Antonio but I do think they have some Europeans. I have been told that many European basketball players prefer to stay home if they are bench or depth players in the NBA. Some European leagues pay well enough (tax free, car and apartment free) that its equilivant to bench pay in the US. Given the cultural differences between European and American players many prefer to stay home. Thus in your experience basketball players are black but thats doesn’t mean there isn’t good white players … they just aren’t in the NBA.
Like I said … cultural does provide athletic focus; the Dominican Republic produces more baseball players per capitia than anywhere else in the world yet is just a few hundred miles from a small island that produces the world’s best sprinters. The ancestors of both are from West Africa (as are most African Americans)
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